每日简报

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…

因果目标量选择的统一框架AI 解读

Estimating the causal effect of a treatment or health policy with observational data can be challenging due to an imbalance of and a lack of overlap between treated and control covariate distributions. In the presence of limited overlap, researchers choose between 1) methods (e.g., inverse probability weighting) that imply traditional estimands but whose estimators are at risk of considerable bias and variance; and 2) methods (e.g., overlap weighting) which imply a different…

基于得分匹配的线性、非线性与潜变量因果发现AI 解读

Causal discovery from observational data holds great promise, but existing methods rely on strong assumptions about the underlying causal structure, often requiring full observability of all relevant variables. We tackle these challenges by leveraging the score function $\nabla \log p(X)$ of observed variables for causal discovery and propose the following contributions. First, we fine-tune the existing identifiability results with the score on additive noise models, showing…

基于有限医学检测与用药数据的数据协作因果推断AI 解读

Observational studies enable causal inferences when randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are not feasible. However, integrating sensitive medical data across multiple institutions introduces significant privacy challenges. The data collaboration quasi-experiment (DC-QE) framework addresses these concerns by sharing "intermediate representations" -- dimensionality-reduced data derived from raw data -- instead of the raw data. While the DC-QE can estimate treatment effects, its…

网络干扰下因果推断的局部方法AI 解读

We propose a new nonparametric modeling framework for causal inference when outcomes depend on how agents are linked in a social or economic network. Such network interference describes a large literature on treatment spillovers, social interactions, social learning, information diffusion, disease and financial contagion, social capital formation, and more. Our approach works by first characterizing how an agent is linked in the network using the configuration of other…