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结合有偏与无偏因果估计的经验贝叶斯双重收缩AI 解读

Motivated by the proliferation of observational datasets and the need to integrate non-randomized evidence with randomized controlled trials, causal inference researchers have recently proposed several new methodologies for combining biased and unbiased estimators. We contribute to this growing literature by developing a new class of estimators for the data-combination problem: double-shrinkage estimators. Double-shrinkers first compute a data-driven convex combination of…

适用于任意结果变量的多处理异质效应子样本最小二乘估计AI 解读

For multiple treatments D=0,1,...,J, covariates X and outcome Y, the ordinary least squares estimator (OLS) of Y on (D1,...,DJ,X) is widely applied to a constant-effect linear model, where Dj is the dummy variable for D=j. However, the treatment effects are almost always X-heterogeneous in reality, or Y is noncontinuous, to invalidate such a linear model. The blind hope of practitioners is that the OLS "somehow" estimates a sensible average of the unknown X-heterogeneous…

将简洁精确的 p 值与复杂含混的现实联系起来AI 解读

Mathematics is a limited component of solutions to real-world problems, as it expresses only what is expected to be true if all our assumptions are correct, including implicit assumptions that are omnipresent and often incorrect. Statistical methods are rife with implicit assumptions whose violation can be life-threatening when results from them are used to set policy. Among them are that there is human equipoise or unbiasedness in data generation, management, analysis, and…

利用袋外后分层高效估计处理效应AI 解读

Post-stratification is often used to estimate treatment effects with higher efficiency. However, the majority of existing post-stratification frameworks depend on prior knowledge of the distributions of covariates and assume that the units are classified into post-strata without error. We propose a novel method to determine a proper stratification rule by mapping the covariates into a post-stratification factor (PSF) using predictive regression models. Inspired by the…

揭开大数据统计匹配算法的面纱AI 解读

Statistical matching is an effective method for estimating causal effects in which treated units are paired with control units with ``similar'' values of confounding covariates prior to performing estimation. In this way, matching helps isolate the effect of treatment on response from effects due to the confounding covariates. While there are a large number of software packages to perform statistical matching, the algorithms and techniques used to solve statistical matching…

结合广义线性结果模型的逆概率处理加权双重稳健估计AI 解读

There are now many options for doubly robust estimation; however, there is a concerning trend in the applied literature to believe that the combination of a propensity score and an adjusted outcome model automatically results in a doubly robust estimator and/or to misuse more complex established doubly robust estimators. A simple alternative, canonical link generalized linear models (GLM) fit via inverse probability of treatment (propensity score) weighted maximum likelihood…

用因果推断避免数据驱动参数分析的偏差：建筑工程行业案例AI 解读

The decision-making process in real-world implementations has been affected by a growing reliance on data-driven models. We investigated the synergetic pattern between the data-driven methods, empirical domain knowledge, and first-principles simulations. We showed the potential risk of biased results when using data-driven models without causal analysis. Using a case study assessing the implication of several design solutions on the energy consumption of a building, we…

基于核岭回归的非线性格兰杰因果分析AI 解读

I introduce a novel algorithm and accompanying Python library, named mlcausality, designed for the identification of nonlinear Granger causal relationships. This novel algorithm uses a flexible plug-in architecture that enables researchers to employ any nonlinear regressor as the base prediction model. Subsequently, I conduct a comprehensive performance analysis of mlcausality when the prediction regressor is the kernel ridge regressor with the radial basis function kernel.…

等误差方差线性因果模型中结构不确定性下的置信推断AI 解读

Inferring the effect of interventions within complex systems is a fundamental problem of statistics. A widely studied approach employs structural causal models that postulate noisy functional relations among a set of interacting variables. The underlying causal structure is then naturally represented by a directed graph whose edges indicate direct causal dependencies. In a recent line of work, additional assumptions on the causal models have been shown to render this causal…

统计因果性的潜在结果与决策理论基础AI 解读

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Causal Inference, Philip Dawid has described a graphical causal model based on decision diagrams. This article describes how single-world intervention graphs (SWIGs) relate to these diagrams. In this way, a correspondence is established between Dawid's approach and those based on potential outcomes such as Robins' Finest Fully Randomized Causally Interpreted Structured Tree Graphs. In more detail, a reformulation of Dawid's…

贷款定价的因果视角：选择偏差对报价响应函数识别的影响AI 解读

In lending, where prices are specific to both customers and products, having a well-functioning personalized pricing policy in place is essential to effective business making. Typically, such a policy must be derived from observational data, which introduces several challenges. While the problem of ``endogeneity'' is prominently studied in the established pricing literature, the problem of selection bias (or, more precisely, bid selection bias) is not. We take a step towards…

将多项试验推断推广至目标总体的两阶段方法AI 解读

When considering the effect a treatment will cause in a population of interest, we often look to evidence from randomized controlled trials. In settings where multiple trials on a treatment are available, we may wish to synthesize the trials' participant data to obtain causally interpretable estimates of the average treatment effect in a specific target population. Traditional meta-analytic approaches to synthesizing data from multiple studies estimate the average effect…

VLUCI：用于反事实推断的未观测混杂因素变分学习AI 解读

Causal inference plays a vital role in diverse domains like epidemiology, healthcare, and economics. De-confounding and counterfactual prediction in observational data has emerged as a prominent concern in causal inference research. While existing models tackle observed confounders, the presence of unobserved confounders remains a significant challenge, distorting causal inference and impacting counterfactual outcome accuracy. To address this, we propose a novel variational…

高维设定下的分布反事实分析AI 解读

In the context of treatment effect estimation, this paper proposes a new methodology to recover the counterfactual distribution when there is a single (or a few) treated unit and possibly a high-dimensional number of potential controls observed in a panel structure. The methodology accommodates, albeit does not require, the number of units to be larger than the number of time periods (high-dimensional setup). As opposed to modeling only the conditional mean, we propose to…

观察数据的因果性检验AI 解读

In prior work we have introduced an asymptotic threshold of sufficient randomness for causal inference from observational data. In this paper we extend that prior work in three main ways. First, we show how to empirically estimate a lower bound for the randomness from measures of concordance transported from studies of monozygotic twins. Second, we generalize our methodology for application on a finite population and we introduce methods to implement finite population…

G 估计量对无效工具变量的敏感性分析AI 解读

Instrumental variables regression is a tool that is commonly used in the analysis of observational data. The instrumental variables are used to make causal inference about the effect of a certain exposure in the presence of unmeasured confounders. A valid instrumental variable is a variable that is associated with the exposure, affects the outcome only through the exposure (exclusion criterion), and is not confounded with the outcome (exogeneity). These assumptions are…

通过预平滑估计比例风险模型的工具变量方法AI 解读

We consider instrumental variable estimation of the proportional hazards model of Cox (1972). The instrument and the endogenous variable are discrete but there can be (possibly continuous) exogenous covariables. By making a rank invariance assumption, we can reformulate the proportional hazards model into a semiparametric version of the instrumental variable quantile regression model of Chernozhukov and Hansen (2005). A naïve estimation approach based on conditional moment…

将非混杂协变量误作混杂变量，会影响潜在结果框架下的因果推断吗？AI 解读

The Potential Outcome Framework (POF) plays a prominent role in the field of causal inference. Most causal inference models based on the POF (CIMs-POF) are designed for eliminating confounding bias and default to an underlying assumption of Confounding Covariates. This assumption posits that the covariates consist solely of confounders. However, the assumption of Confounding Covariates is challenging to maintain in practice, particularly when dealing with high-dimensional…

利用因果推断与随机实验衡量、解释和改善算法公平性AI 解读

Algorithm fairness has become a central problem for the broad adoption of artificial intelligence. Although the past decade has witnessed an explosion of excellent work studying algorithm biases, achieving fairness in real-world AI production systems has remained a challenging task. Most existing works fail to excel in practical applications since either they have conflicting measurement techniques and/ or heavy assumptions, or require code-access of the production models,…

基于设计的多维聚类推断AI 解读

This paper extends the design-based framework to settings with multi-way cluster dependence, and shows how multi-way clustering can be justified when clustered assignment and clustered sampling occurs on different dimensions, or when either sampling or assignment is multi-way clustered. Unlike one-way clustering, the plug-in variance estimator in multi-way clustering is no longer conservative, so valid inference either requires an assumption on the correlation of treatment…

动态中介分析的强化学习框架AI 解读

Mediation analysis learns the causal effect transmitted via mediator variables between treatments and outcomes and receives increasing attention in various scientific domains to elucidate causal relations. Most existing works focus on point-exposure studies where each subject only receives one treatment at a single time point. However, there are a number of applications (e.g., mobile health) where the treatments are sequentially assigned over time and the dynamic mediation…

政策制定中机器学习异质性处理效应估计的公平性含义AI 解读

Causal machine learning methods which flexibly generate heterogeneous treatment effect estimates could be very useful tools for governments trying to make and implement policy. However, as the critical artificial intelligence literature has shown, governments must be very careful of unintended consequences when using machine learning models. One way to try and protect against unintended bad outcomes is with AI Fairness methods which seek to create machine learning models…

平衡权重估计的可解释敏感性分析AI 解读

Assessing sensitivity to unmeasured confounding is an important step in observational studies, which typically estimate effects under the assumption that all confounders are measured. In this paper, we develop a sensitivity analysis framework for balancing weights estimators, an increasingly popular approach that solves an optimization problem to obtain weights that directly minimizes covariate imbalance. In particular, we adapt a sensitivity analysis framework using the…

时间序列极端事件中的因果关系AI 解读

Consider two stationary time series with heavy-tailed marginal distributions. We aim to detect whether they have a causal relation, that is, if a change in one causes a change in the other. Usual methods for causal discovery are not well suited if the causal mechanisms only appear during extreme events. We propose a framework to detect a causal structure from the extremes of time series, providing a new tool to extract causal information from extreme events. We introduce the…