Writing study: Pareto-Conditioned Diffusion Models for Offline Multi-Objective Optimization

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← ICLR 2026 oral writing corpus

Jatan Shrestha, Santeri Heiskanen, Kari Hepola, Severi Rissanen, Pekka Jääskeläinen, Joni Pajarinen · Official ICLR 2026 oral record

Observed writing choices, not acceptance rules. This study examines the inspected manuscript version. It does not establish why the paper was accepted or that its presentation choices should be copied unchanged.

Figure, table and section ledger

Editorial contribution type: Learning & optimization algorithms (primary).

Layout extraction, not a required paper template. Counts are distinct caption labels; a multi-panel figure counts once. Section spans are estimated from heading positions, including floats and whitespace. Method and limitations.

Canonical PDF

33 physical pages

Before references / appendix

≈ 10.39 page-equivalents

Main figures / tables

3 / 2

Attached appendix figures / tables

6 / 30

Attached appendix span

≈ 17.89 page-equivalents

Before references / appendix: ≈ 31.48%References / intervening material: ≈ 14.3%Attached appendix: ≈ 54.21%Estimated layout envelopes, not text/artwork area. Unresolved appendix boundaries remain within the undivided post-body material.

Section-by-section lengths and source pages

The title/abstract/front matter precede the first numbered heading. A span ends at the next detected top-level heading, not at the last sentence; end-page whitespace is included. References and statements are listed separately. These are not measurements of text-only or artwork area.

Top-level heading	Starts on PDF page	Estimated span	Share of entire PDF
1 INTRODUCTION	1	≈ 1.3 pp.	3.94%
2 RELATED WORK	2	≈ 0.63 pp.	1.91%
3 BACKGROUND	3	≈ 0.96 pp.	2.91%
4 METHOD	4	≈ 2.1 pp.	6.36%
5 EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION	6	≈ 3.81 pp.	11.55%
6 SUMMARY AND LIMITATIONS	10	≈ 0.43 pp.	1.3%
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS	10	≈ 0.12 pp.	0.36%
7 ETHICS STATEMENT	10	≈ 0.32 pp.	0.97%
8 REPRODUCIBILITY STATEMENT	11	≈ 0.2 pp.	0.61%
REFERENCES	11	≈ 4.72 pp.	14.3%
A APPENDIX	16	≈ 17.89 pp.	54.21%

All detected figure and table locations

Main text

• Figure 1 · p. 2
• Figure 2 · p. 5
• Table 1 · p. 8
• Table 2 · p. 9
• Figure 3 · p. 10

Attached appendix

• Figure 4 · p. 16
• Figure 5 · p. 17
• Table 3 · p. 17
• Table 4 · p. 18
• Table 5 · p. 19
• Table 6 · p. 19
• Figure 6 · p. 20
• Table 7 · p. 20
• Figure 7 · p. 21
• Figure 8 · p. 21
• Figure 9 · p. 22
• Table 8 · p. 23
• Table 9 · p. 24
• Table 10 · p. 25
• Table 11 · p. 25
• Table 12 · p. 25
• Table 13 · p. 26
• Table 14 · p. 26
• Table 15 · p. 26
• Table 16 · p. 27
• Table 17 · p. 27
• Table 18 · p. 28
• Table 19 · p. 28
• Table 20 · p. 28
• Table 21 · p. 29
• Table 22 · p. 29
• Table 23 · p. 29
• Table 24 · p. 30
• Table 25 · p. 30
• Table 26 · p. 31
• Table 27 · p. 31
• Table 28 · p. 31
• Table 29 · p. 32
• Table 30 · p. 32
• Table 31 · p. 32
• Table 32 · p. 33

Argument and organization

1. Offline MOO as conditional sampling

   Replace explicit surrogate-guided optimization with target-conditioned generation, then identify reweighting and target selection as the two new components.

2. Benchmark breadth, component ablations and limitations

   Separate average ranking from individual-task outcomes and explain weak high-dimensional and categorical cases.

Problem, claim and contribution

The introduction states a concrete tension: improve beyond a fixed dataset without exploiting unreliable surrogate predictions. This motivates direct conditioning and gives each method component a clear purpose.

Sections 1–4, pages 1–5. · Main paper

Argument and section order

Two case studies compare both a successful engineering task and unsuccessful high-dimensional policy generation, explicitly checking reconstruction before extrapolation. This diagnoses a representation limit rather than hiding it behind an average.

Appendix A.7; Figures 8–9, pages 21–22. · Main paper

Figures, captions and visual explanation

Figure 2 turns conditioning-point construction into three sparse geometric panels: ranking and directions, assignment, then extrapolation plus noise. Matching panel letters in the caption make an otherwise procedural contribution easy to follow.

Figure 2, page 5. · Main paper

Tables, comparisons and evidence

The compact ablation table preserves negative cases: full PCD loses to unweighted reference-direction sampling on ZDT2 and Regex. This is more informative than only the aggregate ranking, although the prose overstates consistency.

Tables 1–2, pages 8–9. · Main paper

Appendix and reproducibility

The appendix follows observed weaknesses into data-quality distributions, temperature sensitivity, runtime, deterministic versus stochastic sampling, then target-versus-outcome plots and complete per-task scores.

Appendices A.1–A.8, pages 16–23; A.11–A.13, pages 24–33. · Main paper

Clarity and writing conventions

Several implementation details need consistency checks: Equation 5 counts points dominated by x despite prose defining the reverse; Algorithm 2 uses undefined y* and Pt; the main ODE description differs from the default stochastic sampler documented later.

Equation 5, page 4; Appendix A.3, page 17; Algorithm 2, page 24. · Main paper

What to reuse—and what not to infer

Transferable lesson: Use a small geometric figure for a sampling procedure, then pair aggregate rankings with explicit failure-case diagnostics and complete per-task tables.

Boundary: Average rank is not universal superiority. The main text and appendix give different explanations for reweighting failures, and the displayed dominance formula/pseudocode require code verification before reuse.

Apply this lesson using the argument and evidence worksheet.

Inspection record and sources

Checked

2026-09-19

Reading status

Full text + selected visuals inspected

Main text

Pages 1–11: Sections 1–8, algorithms, experiments, limitations and reproducibility.

Appendix / supplement

Pages 16–33: Appendices A.1–A.13, all sensitivity analyses, conditioning pseudocode and percentile-result tables.

Visually inspected PDF pages

5, 9

• ICLR 2026 final proceedings · 33 pages