每日简报

面向目标因果问题的序贯间接实验设计AI 解读

Scientific hypotheses typically concern specific aspects of complex, imperfectly understood or entirely unknown mechanisms, such as the effect of gene expression levels on phenotypes or how microbial communities influence environmental health. Such queries are inherently causal (rather than purely associational), but in many settings, experiments can not be conducted directly on the target variables of interest, but are indirect. Therefore, they perturb the target variable,…

贝叶斯因果发现的元学习方法AI 解读

Discovering a unique causal structure is difficult due to both inherent identifiability issues, and the consequences of finite data. As such, uncertainty over causal structures, such as those obtained from a Bayesian posterior, are often necessary for downstream tasks. Finding an accurate approximation to this posterior is challenging, due to the large number of possible causal graphs, as well as the difficulty in the subproblem of finding posteriors over the functional…

PCM 选择器：用于线性因果效应评估的惩罚协变量与中介选择方法AI 解读

For a data-generating process for random variables that can be described with a linear structural equation model, we consider a situation in which (i) a set of covariates satisfying the back-door criterion cannot be observed or (ii) such a set can be observed, but standard statistical estimation methods cannot be applied to estimate causal effects because of multicollinearity/high-dimensional data problems. We propose a novel two-stage penalized regression approach, the…

单代理合成控制AI 解读

Synthetic control methods are widely used to estimate the treatment effect on a single treated unit in time-series settings. A common approach to estimate synthetic control weights is to regress the treated unit's pre-treatment outcome and covariates' time series measurements on those of untreated units via ordinary least squares. However, this approach can perform poorly if the pre-treatment fit is not near perfect, whether the weights are normalized or not. In this paper,…

纵向比例效应模型的批判性评估AI 解读

Nonlinear longitudinal proportional effect models have been proposed to improve power and provide direct estimates of the proportional treatment effect in randomized clinical trials. These models assume a fixed proportional treatment effect over time, which can lead to bias and Type I error inflation when the assumption is violated. Even when the proportional effect assumption holds, these models are biased, and their inference is sensitive to the labeling of treatment…

通过重抽样与模型聚合稀疏估计广义向量自回归的参数支撑集AI 解读

The central problem we address in this work is estimation of the parameter support set S, the set of indices corresponding to nonzero parameters, in the context of a sparse parametric likelihood model for discrete multivariate time series. We develop an algorithm that performs the estimation by aggregating support sets obtained by applying the LASSO to data subsamples. Our approach is to identify several candidate models and estimate S by selecting common parameters, thus…

Fisher 市场与预算节奏拍卖中的统计推断和 A/B 测试AI 解读

We initiate the study of statistical inference and A/B testing for two market equilibrium models: linear Fisher market (LFM) equilibrium and first-price pacing equilibrium (FPPE). LFM arises from fair resource allocation systems such as allocation of food to food banks and notification opportunities to different types of notifications. For LFM, we assume that the data observed is captured by the classical finite-dimensional Fisher market equilibrium, and its steady-state…

因子模型的张量主成分分析AI 解读

Modern empirical analysis often relies on high-dimensional panel datasets with non-negligible cross-sectional and time-series correlations. Factor models are natural for capturing such dependencies. A tensor factor model describes the $d$-dimensional panel as a sum of a reduced rank component and an idiosyncratic noise, generalizing traditional factor models for two-dimensional panels. We consider a tensor factor model corresponding to the notion of a reduced multilinear…

费舍尔市场均衡与一价拍卖预算调节均衡的自助法推断AI 解读

The linear Fisher market (LFM) is a basic equilibrium model from economics, which also has applications in fair and efficient resource allocation. First-price pacing equilibrium (FPPE) is a model capturing budget-management mechanisms in first-price auctions. In certain practical settings such as advertising auctions, there is an interest in performing statistical inference over these models. A popular methodology for general statistical inference is the bootstrap procedure.…

通过因果正则化提升多元分析的分布外稳健性AI 解读

We propose a regularisation strategy of classical machine learning algorithms rooted in causality that ensures robustness against distribution shifts. Building upon the anchor regression framework, we demonstrate how incorporating a straightforward regularisation term into the loss function of classical multivariate analysis algorithms, such as (orthonormalized) partial least squares, reduced-rank regression, and multiple linear regression, enables out-of-distribution…

反事实逻辑与因果推断的认识论AI 解读

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics recognized an epistemology of causal inference based on the Rubin causal model (Rubin 1974), which merits broader attention in philosophy. This model, in fact, presupposes a logical principle of counterfactuals, Conditional Excluded Middle (CEM), the locus of a pivotal debate between Stalnaker (1968) and Lewis (1973) on the semantics of counterfactuals. Proponents of CEM should recognize that this connection points to a new argument for CEM…

未知干预下高斯结构因果模型的刻画与贪心学习AI 解读

We consider the problem of recovering the causal structure underlying observations from different experimental conditions when the targets of the interventions in each experiment are unknown. We assume a linear structural causal model with additive Gaussian noise and consider interventions that perturb their targets while maintaining the causal relationships in the system. Different models may entail the same distributions, offering competing causal explanations for the…

通过双重抽样处理缺失数据的因果分位数处理效应AI 解读

Causal weighted quantile treatment effects (WQTE) are a useful complement to standard causal contrasts that focus on the mean when interest lies at the tails of the counterfactual distribution. To-date, however, methods for estimation and inference regarding causal WQTEs have assumed complete data on all relevant factors. In most practical settings, however, data will be missing or incomplete data, particularly when the data are not collected for research purposes, as is the…

具有选择性资格的纵向因果推断AI 解读

Dropout poses a significant challenge to causal inference in longitudinal studies with time-varying treatments. However, existing research does not simultaneously address dropout and time-varying treatments. We examine selective eligibility, an important yet overlooked source of non-ignorable dropout in such settings. This problem arises when a unit's prior treatment history influences its eligibility for subsequent treatments, a common scenario in medical and other…

分层获益概率：部分识别与稳健、稳定的推断AI 解读

We define the Probability of Tiered Benefit in scenarios with a binary exposure and an outcome that is either categorical with $K \geq 2$ ordered tiers or continuous partitioned by $K-1$ fixed thresholds into disjoint intervals. Similarly to other pure counterfactual queries, this parameter is not $g$-identifiable without additional assumptions. We demonstrate that strong monotonicity does not suffice for point identification when $K \geq 3$ and provide sharp bounds both…

BudgetIV：多数工具变量无效时因果效应的最优部分识别AI 解读

Instrumental variables (IVs) are widely used to estimate causal effects in the presence of unobserved confounding between exposure and outcome. An IV must affect the outcome exclusively through the exposure and be unconfounded with the outcome. We present a framework for relaxing either or both of these strong assumptions with tuneable and interpretable budget constraints. Our algorithm returns a feasible set of causal effects that can be identified exactly given relevant…

用于因果效应估计的组合式模型AI 解读

Many real-world systems can be usefully represented as sets of interacting components. Examples include computational systems, such as query processors and compilers, natural systems, such as cells and ecosystems, and social systems, such as families and organizations. However, current approaches to estimating potential outcomes and causal effects typically treat such systems as single units, represent them with a fixed set of variables, and assume a homogeneous…

利用广义随机森林非参数估计条件密度AI 解读

Considering a continuous random variable Y together with a continuous random vector X, I propose a nonparametric estimator f^(.|x) for the conditional density of Y given X=x. This estimator takes the form of an exponential series whose coefficients Tx = (Tx1,...,TxJ) are the solution of a system of nonlinear equations that depends on an estimator of the conditional expectation E[p(Y)|X=x], where p is a J-dimensional vector of basis functions. The distinguishing feature of…

适用于多种删失机制的生存数据灵活控制函数方法AI 解读

This paper addresses the problem of identifying and estimating the causal effect of a treatment in the presence of unmeasured confounding and various types of right-censoring. Examples of these censoring mechanisms are administrative censoring, competing risks and dependent censoring (e.g. loss to follow-up). Different parametric transformations are applied to each event time, resulting in a regression model with a more additive structure and error terms that are…

基于变分因果推断的反事实生成建模AI 解读

Estimating an individual's counterfactual outcomes under interventions is a challenging task for traditional causal inference and supervised learning approaches when the outcome is high-dimensional (e.g. gene expressions, facial images) and covariates are relatively limited. In this case, to predict one's outcomes under counterfactual treatments, it is crucial to leverage individual information contained in the observed outcome in addition to the covariates. Prior works…

半参数有效半监督学习的统一框架AI 解读

We consider statistical inference under a semi-supervised setting where we have access to both a labeled dataset consisting of pairs $\{X_i, Y_i \}_{i=1}^n$ and an unlabeled dataset $\{ X_i \}_{i=n+1}^{n+N}$. We ask the question: under what circumstances, and by how much, can incorporating the unlabeled dataset improve upon inference using the labeled data? To answer this question, we investigate semi-supervised learning through the lens of semiparametric efficiency theory.…

一般处理分配概率下实验设计的分布差异问题AI 解读

We investigate experimental design for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with both equal and unequal treatment-control assignment probabilities. Our work makes progress on the connection between the distributional discrepancy minimization (DDM) problem introduced by Harshaw et al. (2024) and the design of RCTs. We make two main contributions: First, we prove that approximating the optimal solution of the DDM problem within a certain constant error is NP-hard. Second, we…

逻辑斯蒂—正态混合模型下高维亚组分析的收缩似然比检验AI 解读

In subgroup analysis, testing the existence of a subgroup with a differential treatment effect serves as protection against spurious subgroup discovery. Despite its importance, this hypothesis testing possesses a complicated nature: parameter characterizing subgroup classification is not identified under the null hypothesis of no subgroup. Due to this irregularity, the existing methods have the following two limitations. First, the asymptotic null distribution of test…

利用协变量平衡程序进行因果效应的一般贝叶斯推断AI 解读

In observational studies, the propensity score plays a central role in estimating causal effects of interest. The inverse probability weighting (IPW) estimator is commonly used for this purpose. However, if the propensity score model is misspecified, the IPW estimator may produce biased estimates of causal effects. Previous studies have proposed some robust propensity score estimation procedures. However, these methods require considering parameters that dominate the…