---
title: "Conformal prediction"
description: "A distribution-free method that turns a trained model's output into a set of candidate answers that contains the right one with a chosen probability."
canonical: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/conformal-prediction
author: "Jorge García Aibar"
license: "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)"
doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197
version: "0.5.0"
updated: 2026-09-24
---

# Conformal prediction

A distribution-free method that turns a trained model's output into a set of candidate answers that contains the right one with a chosen probability [1]. A large set signals uncertainty that a governance rule can route on.

- Developed in: [ch. 11, Calibration before thresholds](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/ai-defined#calibration-before-thresholds)
- Chapters: [ch. 11, AI Defined](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/ai-defined)
- In the glossary chapter: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/glossary#t-conformal-prediction

## Sources

[1] A Gentle Introduction to Conformal Prediction and Distribution-Free Uncertainty Quantification (prediction sets with user-specified coverage; arXiv 2107.07511). Angelopoulos and Bates. 2021-07-15. https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.07511 (verified: primary)