Improving GNN Calibration with Discriminative Ability: Insights and Strategies

The widespread adoption of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) has led to an increasing focus on their reliability. To address the issue of underconfidence in GNNs, various calibration methods have been developed to gain notable reductions in calibration error. However, we observe that existing approaches generally fail to enhance consistently, and in some cases even deteriorate, GNNs’ ability to discriminate between correct and incorrect predictions. In this study, we advocate the significance of discriminative ability and the inclusion of relevant evaluation metrics. Our rationale is twofold: 1) Overlooking discriminative ability can inadvertently compromise the overall quality of the model; 2) Leveraging discriminative ability can significantly inform and improve calibration outcomes. Therefore, we thoroughly explore the reasons why existing calibration methods have ineffectiveness and even degradation regarding the discriminative ability of GNNs. Building upon these insights, we conduct GNN calibration experiments across multiple datasets using a straightforward example model, denoted as DC(GNN). Its excellent performance confirms the potential of integrating discriminative ability as a key consideration in the calibration of GNNs, thereby establishing a pathway toward more effective and reliable network calibration.