每日简报

调整识别距离：用于因果结构学习的gadjid工具AI 解读

Evaluating graphs learned by causal discovery algorithms is difficult: The number of edges that differ between two graphs does not reflect how the graphs differ with respect to the identifying formulas they suggest for causal effects. We introduce a framework for developing causal distances between graphs which includes the structural intervention distance for directed acyclic graphs as a special case. We use this framework to develop improved adjustment-based distances as…

利用条件生成模型对可识别因果干预分布进行采样AI 解读

Causal inference from observational data plays critical role in many applications in trustworthy machine learning. While sound and complete algorithms exist to compute causal effects, many of them assume access to conditional likelihoods, which is difficult to estimate for high-dimensional (particularly image) data. Researchers have alleviated this issue by simulating causal relations with neural models. However, when we have high-dimensional variables in the causal graph…

第一价格节奏均衡间的干扰：偏差与方差分析AI 解读

Online A/B testing is widely used in the internet industry to inform decisions on new feature roll-outs. For online marketplaces (such as advertising markets), standard approaches to A/B testing may lead to biased results when buyers operate under a budget constraint, as budget consumption in one arm of the experiment impacts performance of the other arm. To counteract this interference, one can use a budget-split design where the budget constraint operates on a per-arm…

处理效应估计中双重稳健学习的结构无关最优性AI 解读

Average treatment effect estimation is the most central problem in causal inference with application to numerous disciplines. While many estimation strategies have been proposed in the literature, the statistical optimality of these methods has still remained an open area of investigation, especially in regimes where these methods do not achieve parametric rates. In this paper, we adopt the recently introduced structure-agnostic framework of statistical lower bounds, which…

风险评估的风险：用预测模型作治疗决策时的因果盲点AI 解读

Clinicians increasingly rely on prediction models to guide treatment choices. Most prediction models, however, are developed using observational data that include some patients who have already received the treatment the prediction model is meant to inform. Special attention to the causal role of those earlier treatments is required when interpreting the resulting predictions. We identify 'causal blind spots' in three common approaches to handling treatment when developing a…

观察性研究方案：回归不连续设计的应用AI 解读

In his 2022 IMS Medallion Lecture delivered at the Joint Statistical Meetings, Prof. Dylan S. Small eloquently advocated for the use of protocols in observational studies. We discuss his proposal and, inspired by his ideas, we develop a protocol for the regression discontinuity design.

多重重复测量的多变量有序回归AI 解读

In this paper we propose a multivariate ordinal regression model which allows the joint modeling of three-dimensional panel data containing both repeated and multiple measurements for a collection of subjects. This is achieved by a multivariate autoregressive structure on the errors of the latent variables underlying the ordinal responses, where we distinguish between the correlations at a single point in time and the persistence over time. The error distribution is assumed…

因果面板模型矩阵补全方法中的数据驱动模型选择AI 解读

Matrix completion estimators are employed in causal panel data models to regulate the rank of the underlying factor model using nuclear norm minimization. This convex optimization problem enables concurrent regularization of a potentially high-dimensional set of covariates to shrink the model size. For valid finite sample inference, we adopt a permutation-based approach and prove its validity for any treatment assignment mechanism. Simulations illustrate the consistency of…

利用局部分布开展孟德尔随机化：不确定的意见无效AI 解读

Mendelian randomization (MR) considers using genetic variants as instrumental variables (IVs) to infer causal effects in observational studies. However, the validity of causal inference in MR can be compromised when the IVs are potentially invalid. In this work, we propose a new method, MR-Local, to infer the causal effect in the existence of possibly invalid IVs. By leveraging the distribution of ratio estimates around the true causal effect, MR-Local selects the cluster of…

具有成对依赖的马尔可夫随机场中的伪关联AI 解读

Yule (1926) identified the issue of "nonsense correlations" in time series data, where dependence within each of two random vectors causes overdispersion -- i.e. variance inflation -- for measures of dependence between the two. During the near century since then, much has been written about nonsense correlations -- but nearly all of it confined to the time series literature. In this paper we provide the first, to our knowledge, rigorous study of this phenomenon for more…

连续处理且不存在处理强度不变单位的双重差分估计量AI 解读

Many treatments or policy interventions are continuous in nature. Examples include prices, taxes or temperatures. Empirical researchers have usually relied on two-way fixed effect regressions to estimate treatment effects in such cases. However, such estimators are not robust to heterogeneous treatment effects in general; they also rely on the linearity of treatment effects. We propose estimators for continuous treatments that do not impose those restrictions, and that can…

CATT、SATT 与 MATT：样本受处理者效应的半参数推断AI 解读

We study variants of the average treatment effect on the treated with population parameters replaced by their sample counterparts. For each estimand, we derive the limiting distribution with respect to a semiparametric efficient estimator of the population effect and provide guidance on variance estimation. Included in our analysis is the well-known sample average treatment effect on the treated, for which we obtain some unexpected results. Unlike the ordinary sample average…

利用因果模型识别行动的意图效应AI 解读

The aim of this paper is to extend the framework of causal inference, in particular as it has been developed by Judea Pearl, in order to model actions and identify their intended effects, in the direction opened by Elisabeth Anscombe. We show how intentions can be inferred from a causal model and its implied correlations observable in data. The paper defines confounding effects as the reasons why teleological inference may fail and introduces interference as a way to control…

脱靶干预下的因果发现AI 解读

Causal graph discovery is a significant problem with applications across various disciplines. However, with observational data alone, the underlying causal graph can only be recovered up to its Markov equivalence class, and further assumptions or interventions are necessary to narrow down the true graph. This work addresses the causal discovery problem under the setting of stochastic interventions with the natural goal of minimizing the number of interventions performed. We…

结构不确定性下因果推断的对偶似然AI 解读

Knowledge of the underlying causal relations is essential for inferring the effect of interventions in complex systems. In a widely studied approach, structural causal models postulate noisy functional relations among interacting variables, where the underlying causal structure is then naturally represented by a directed graph whose edges indicate direct causal dependencies. In the typical application, this underlying causal structure must be learned from data, and thus, the…

高维数据中边际风险比估计的协变量选择AI 解读

Hazard ratios are frequently reported in time-to-event and epidemiological studies to assess treatment effects. In observational studies, the combination of propensity score weights with the Cox proportional hazards model facilitates the estimation of the marginal hazard ratio (MHR). The methods for estimating MHR are analogous to those employed for estimating common causal parameters, such as the average treatment effect. However, MHR estimation in the context of…

后验可分信息成本下的识别AI 解读

I provide a model of rational inattention with heterogeneity and prove it is observationally equivalent to a state-dependent stochastic choice model subject to attention costs. I demonstrate that additive separability of unobservable heterogeneity, together with an independence assumption, suffice for the empirical model to admit a representative agent. Using conditional probabilities, I show how to identify: how covariates affect the desirability of goods, (a measure of)…

超越玩具模型的可信因果推断AI 解读

Causal inference with observational data critically relies on untestable and extra-statistical assumptions that have (sometimes) testable implications. Well-known sets of assumptions that are sufficient to justify the causal interpretation of certain estimators are called identification strategies. These templates for causal analysis, however, do not perfectly map into empirical research practice. Researchers are often left in the disjunctive of either abstracting away from…

理解错位实施政策的双重差分：Medicaid 与 HIV 的应用AI 解读

While a randomized control trial is considered the gold standard for estimating causal treatment effects, there are many research settings in which randomization is infeasible or unethical. In such cases, researchers rely on analytical methods for observational data to explore causal relationships. Difference-in-differences (DID) is one such method that, most commonly, estimates a difference in some mean outcome in a group before and after the implementation of an…

面向定向政策的非线性三重变化估计量AI 解读

The renowned difference-in-differences (DiD) estimator relies on the assumption of 'parallel trends,' which does not hold in many practical applications. To address this issue, the econometrics literature has turned to the triple difference estimator. Both DiD and triple difference are limited to assessing average effects exclusively. An alternative avenue is offered by the changes-in-changes (CiC) estimator, which provides an estimate of the entire counterfactual…

在存在干扰的因果推断中引入主动学习：在线实验的新方法AI 解读

In the domain of causal inference research, the prevalent potential outcomes framework, notably the Rubin Causal Model (RCM), often overlooks individual interference and assumes independent treatment effects. This assumption, however, is frequently misaligned with the intricate realities of real-world scenarios, where interference is not merely a possibility but a common occurrence. Our research endeavors to address this discrepancy by focusing on the estimation of direct…

结合 Group LASSO 扩展 Bagging MARS 的异质性处理效应估计AI 解读

Recent years, large scale clinical data like patient surveys and medical record data are playing an increasing role in medical data science. These large-scale clinical data, collectively referred to as "real-world data (RWD)". It is expected to be widely used in large-scale observational studies of specific diseases, personal medicine or precise medicine, finding the responder of drugs or treatments. Applying RWD for estimating heterogeneous treat ment effect (HTE) has…

利用非混杂预测协变量提高双重稳健估计效率AI 解读

In observational studies, covariates with substantial missing data are often omitted, despite their strong predictive capabilities. These excluded covariates are generally believed not to simultaneously affect both treatment and outcome, indicating that they are not genuine confounders and do not impact the identification of the average treatment effect (ATE). In this paper, we introduce an alternative doubly robust (DR) estimator that fully leverages non-confounding…

迈向自动化因果发现：5G 电信数据案例AI 解读

We introduce the concept of Automated Causal Discovery (AutoCD), defined as any system that aims to fully automate the application of causal discovery and causal reasoning methods. AutoCD's goal is to deliver all causal information that an expert human analyst would and answer a user's causal queries. We describe the architecture of such a platform, and illustrate its performance on synthetic data sets. As a case study, we apply it on temporal telecommunication data. The…