Path-sampled integrated gradients

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Authors: Firuz Kamalov, Fadi Thabtah, R. Sivaraj, Neda Abdelhamid
Cited by: 1

Abstract

We introduce path-sampled integrated gradients (PS-IG), a framework that generalizes feature attribution by computing the expected value over baselines sampled along the linear interpolation path. We prove that PS-IG is mathematically equivalent to path-weighted integrated gradients, provided the weighting function matches the cumulative distribution function of the sampling density. This equivalence allows the stochastic expectation to be evaluated via a deterministic Riemann sum, improving the error convergence rate from O(m-1/2) to O(m-1) for smooth models. Furthermore, we demonstrate analytically that PS-IG functions as a variance-reducing filter against gradient noise---strictly lowering attribution variance by a factor of 1/3 under uniform sampling - while preserving key axiomatic properties such as linearity and implementation invariance.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Stochastic Gradient Optimization Techniques Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning Generative Adversarial Networks and Image Synthesis

Publication details

Journal / source
Gulf Journal of Mathematics
Publisher
Vertex Academic Press
Volume
22
Issue
1
Pages
1–10
Publication date
20 January 2026