Exact grid-free confidence-region computation from dependent p -value functions under arbitrary dependence
Repeated randomization workflows, such as sample splitting and conformal ensembling, frequently produce multiple dependent valid p-value functions for the same target. Existing p-merging theory guarantees pointwise validity under arbitrary dependence, but confidence-region inversion typically requires costly numerical gridding. We study when confidence regions can be computed exactly from split-wise regions without gridding the parameter space. We show that mergers induced by step calibrators form a broad class exactly executable at the region level via finite-layer voting, and a partial converse within the calibrator-induced family ties exact executability to step structure. We develop exact voting algorithms, including an adaptive multi-quantile contour aggregator that avoids pre-specifying a single order-statistic threshold while preserving finite-sample validity under arbitrary dependence. Simulations in repeated-split regression and conformal prediction, and real-data regression examples, show substantial computational gains over grid-inversion comparators while eliminating the discretization error introduced by the inversion grid.
Authors
- Yaohui Lin
Institutions
- South China Normal University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation
- Published
- 2026-09-04
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00949655.2026.2723318
- Primary Topic
- Statistical Methods and Inference
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00