# Deep Sub-Ensembles for Fast Uncertainty Estimation in Image Classification

Source: [Deep Sub-Ensembles for Fast Uncertainty Estimation in Image Classification](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa66b11e209131cea11da1>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-25T21:56:21.324Z

Authors: Matias Valdenegro-Toro

Published: 2019-10-17T21:07:40.000Z

## Abstract

Fast estimates of model uncertainty are required for many robust robotics applications. Deep Ensembles provides state of the art uncertainty without requiring Bayesian methods, but still it is computationally expensive. In this paper we propose deep sub-ensembles, an approximation to deep ensembles where the core idea is to ensemble only the layers close to the output, and not the whole model. With ResNet-20 on the CIFAR10 dataset, we obtain 1.5-2.5 speedup over a Deep Ensemble, with a small increase in error and NLL, and similarly up to 5-15 speedup with a VGG-like network on the SVHN dataset. Our results show that this idea enables a trade-off between error and uncertainty quality versus computational performance.

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.08168>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.08168.pdf>)