CPME embeds counterfactual outcomes in RKHS for flexible policy evaluation.
problem Estimating counterfactual policy outcomes for decision-making.
method Counterfactual Policy Mean Embedding (CPME) framework in RKHS, plug-in and doubly robust estimators, kernel test statistic.
result Doubly robust estimator improves convergence rates and asymptotic normality.
Efficiently evaluates and optimizes counterfactual policies from bandit feedback.
problem Statistical inefficiency in evaluating and optimizing policies from bandit feedback.
method Developed estimators with lowest variance for expected reward from counterfactual policies.
result Achieved significant variance reduction in estimators compared to standard methods.
CAB estimator improves evaluation and learning performance in policy contexts.
problem Offline A/B-testing and off-policy learning using logged contextual bandit feedback.
method Continuous Adaptive Blending (CAB) estimator, subsuming most counterfactual estimators.
result CAB estimator is less biased and has less variance than other estimators.
The paper tackles counterfactual learning for stochastic policies with continuous actions.
problem Learning stochastic policies with continuous actions from logged data.
method Introduces a joint kernel embedding of contexts and actions to model continuous actions, and uses proximal point algorithms and smooth estimators for optimization.
result Demonstrates the benefits of using proximal point algorithms and smooth estimators for counterfactual learning.
This study uses OPE methods to quickly assess auction policies.
problem Rapid decision-making in dynamic auction environments.
method Off-Policy Evaluation and counterfactual methods.
result Improved policy selection and optimization.
New method optimizes incentive allocation with budget constraints.
problem Optimizing financial incentives in marketing campaigns with limited feedback.
method Two-step approach: domain adaptation for reward estimation followed by policy optimization.
result Significant improvement in synthetic and real datasets.
Proposes a method to improve treatment policies in data-scarce clinical settings.
problem Improving treatment policies in data-scarce clinical settings with unobserved confounding.
method Uses a causal mechanism to model the underlying generative process and augments counterfactual trajectories with source domain priors.
result Significantly improves treatment policy performance in a simulated sepsis treatment task.
The paper tackles counterfactual inference with multioutput deep kernels in high-dimensional settings.
problem Performing counterfactual inference with observational data in high-dimensional settings with multiple actions and outcomes.
method The paper presents a general class of counterfactual multi-task deep kernels models based on Structural Causal Models (SCM) and Gaussian Processes.
result The models estimate causal effects and learn policies efficiently, scaling well with high dimensions.
Genie optimizes search marketplaces by estimating policy impacts without risky experiments.
problem Optimizing search marketplaces with frequent policy changes and limited randomized experiments.
method Genie uses an open box simulation engine and click calibration model to estimate KPI impacts.
result Genie outperforms existing approaches in optimizing Bing Ads Marketplace.
New method for estimating counterfactual means in adaptive experiments.
problem Inference for counterfactual means in sequentially designed experiments with adaptive treatment policies.
method Latent factor model and nearest neighbors method for estimation.
result Asymptotically valid confidence intervals for counterfactual means established.
Bayesian approach for modeling counterfactual distribution and off-policy evaluation.
problem Modeling the counterfactual distribution and off-policy evaluation.
method Bayesian conditional mean embeddings and novel Bayesian methods for estimating ultimate treatment effect.
result Quantifying epistemic uncertainty in the counterfactual distribution and off-policy evaluation.
Improves off-policy evaluation with imperfect annotations.
problem Limited dataset coverage for evaluating new policies.
method Doubly robust estimators combining IS and DM, incorporating counterfactual annotations.
result Using annotations within the DM component yields the most desirable theoretical results.
Counterfactual policy evaluation improves autonomous driving policies' generalization.
problem Learnt policies often fail to generalize and handle novel situations.
method Introduces counterfactual policy evaluation using counterfactual worlds.
result Significantly decreases collision-rate while maintaining high success-rate.
New method uses differential equations for better counterfactual analysis.
problem Estimating counterfactual outcomes for policy analysis.
method Continuous-time approach to synthetic controls using controlled differential equations.
result Improves counterfactual estimation for irregularly aligned multivariate time series.
This paper uses counterfactual thinking to improve multi-agent reinforcement learning.
problem Improving decision-making in multi-agent environments.
method Proposes a deep reinforcement learning model with counterfactual thinking to generate and evaluate multiple actions.
result Counterfactual thinking enhances agents' performance in multi-agent environments, leading to higher rewards and fair competition.
Study shows refugee matching gains are robust to different evaluation methods.
problem Stability of refugee matching gains under various evaluation methods.
method Used multiple off-policy evaluation methods including IPW and AIPW.
result Impact estimates remain consistent in magnitude and statistically significant.
Before A/B testing online a new version of a recommender system, it is usual to perform some offline evaluations on historical data. We focus on evaluation methods that compute an estimator of the potential uplift in revenue that could generate this new technology. It helps to iterate faster and to avoid losing money b…
New RL method learns policies from few data using causal models.
problem Limited interaction data and heterogeneous patient responses.
method Exploits structural causal models to model state dynamics and counterfactual reasoning.
result Counterfactual RL algorithms converge to optimal value function.
This paper proposes a method for estimating the effect of a policy intervention on an outcome over time. We train recurrent neural networks (RNNs) on the history of control unit outcomes to learn a useful representation for predicting future outcomes. The learned representation of control units is then applied to the t…
Sayer uses implicit feedback to optimize system policies.
problem Leveraging implicit feedback to improve system policies is difficult due to bias and incompleteness.
method Sayer combines randomized exploration and unbiased counterfactual estimators to evaluate and train new policies using implicit feedback.
result Sayer can accurately evaluate and train new policies that outperform existing ones.
CF-GPS learns policies from logged data by considering counterfactual outcomes.
problem Learning policies from limited real experience in complex environments.
method Assumes logged real experience and models counterfactual outcomes. Uses structural causal models for evaluation.
result Improves policy evaluation and search results on a grid-world task.
Extends OPE to evaluate policies using diverse logging data.
problem Evaluate policies using log data from different policies.
method Develops an OPE method for various logging policies.
result Method's predictions converge to true performance as sample size increases.
New estimator improves policy evaluation in resource allocation RCTs.
problem Difficulty in evaluating policies optimizing limited resource allocation through RCTs.
method Proposes a novel estimator involving retrospective reshuffling of participants across experimental arms.
result The new estimator provides more accurate policy evaluations than common methods.
Estimates sample size for subgroup analysis in randomized experiments.
problem Determining sample size for accurate subgroup analysis.
method Turns inference problem into simultaneous inference, calculates sample size based on confidence level and margin of error.
result Allows inversion of sample size to feasible number of treatment arms or partition complexity.
Counterfactual learning is a natural scenario to improve web-based machine translation services by offline learning from feedback logged during user interactions. In order to avoid the risk of showing inferior translations to users, in such scenarios mostly exploration-free deterministic logging policies are in place. …
We provide a comparative study of several widely used off-policy estimators (Empirical Average, Basic Importance Sampling and Normalized Importance Sampling), detailing the different regimes where they are individually suboptimal. We then exhibit properties optimal estimators should possess. In the case where examples …
NCoRE learns counterfactual representations for combined treatments.
problem Estimating individual response to multiple simultaneous interventions.
method Neural conditional representation with modulators for cross-treatment interactions.
result NCoRE significantly outperforms existing methods in counterfactual treatment effect estimation.
Develops c-GNF for personalized social science policy analysis.
problem Challenges in estimating causal effects and counterfactual inference in social sciences.
method causal-Graphical Normalizing Flow (c-GNF) method.
result c-GNF performs well in estimating causal effects and counterfactual inference.
Procedure for evaluating RL policies in risky settings.
problem Identifying risky episodes in RL policy applications.
method Gumbel-Max SCMs for generating counterfactual trajectories.
result Identifies episodes with dramatic counterfactual reward differences.
Counterfactual inference has become a ubiquitous tool in online advertisement, recommendation systems, medical diagnosis, and econometrics. Accurate modeling of outcome distributions associated with different interventions -- known as counterfactual distributions -- is crucial for the success of these applications. In …
Choosing optimal (or at least better) policies is an important problem in domains from medicine to education to finance and many others. One approach to this problem is through controlled experiments/trials - but controlled experiments are expensive. Hence it is important to choose the best policies on the basis of obs…
New method estimates individual dose-response curves for any number of treatments.
problem Estimating individual dose-response curves for varied exposures.
method Neural network approach for learning counterfactual representations.
result Set a new state-of-the-art in estimating individual dose-response curves.
Paper uses SC to estimate hidden interference for WSRM.
problem Maximizing sum-rate with hidden interfering sources.
method Synthetic control (SC) for estimating counterfactual interference in WMMSE.
result SC-WMMSE outperforms original WMMSE in convergence and objective.
Unified reinforcement learning objective improves policy performance prediction.
problem Improving policy performance prediction in reinforcement learning.
method Proposed a counterfactual objective and an emphatic approach to compute unbiased policy gradients.
result Geoff-PAC algorithm demonstrates empirical success in deep RL benchmarks.
Study uses artificial counterfactuals to show lockdowns reduced US case and death counts.
problem Impact of lockdowns on US case and death counts during the pandemic.
method Artificial counterfactual approach comparing states with and without lockdowns.
result Average two times more cases would have occurred without lockdowns.
New method for evaluating sequential recommendations with lower variance.
problem Evaluating good sequences of music, video, news, and e-commerce recommendations.
method Proposes a new counterfactual estimator for sequential reward interactions with lower variance and asymptotic unbiasedness.
result Our method outperforms existing methods in bias and data efficiency for sequential track recommendations.
CRN model estimates treatment effects over time using adversarial balancing.
problem Estimating treatment effects over time in medical settings.
method Adversarial domain balancing to remove time-varying confounders.
result CRN achieves lower error in estimating counterfactuals and treatment timing.
Proposes a scalable method for counterfactual prediction using machine learning.
problem De-bias causal estimators with high-dimensional data in observational studies.
method Uses entropy balancing to learn weights minimizing Jensen-Shannon divergence, leading to robust counterfactual predictions.
result Consistent causal estimation if either propensity score or outcome model is correctly specified.
The paper tackles off-policy learning from multiple loggers.
problem Learning policies from multiple historical logs in real-world applications.
method Uses counterfactual estimators to learn policies from multi-logger data, analyzes generalization error, and introduces a constrained optimization problem.
result The proposed methods achieve better performance than state-of-the-arts.
Decision-makers are faced with the challenge of estimating what is likely to happen when they take an action. For instance, if I choose not to treat this patient, are they likely to die? Practitioners commonly use supervised learning algorithms to fit predictive models that help decision-makers reason about likely futu…
The paper proposes a method to explain expert decisions by modeling preferences with 'what if' outcomes.
problem Interpreting and auditing decision-making policies in institutions.
method Integrating counterfactual reasoning into batch inverse reinforcement learning.
result The method effectively recovers accurate and interpretable descriptions of expert behavior.
Bayesian CRM improves offline learning from logged bandit data.
problem Offline learning from logged bandit feedback.
method PAC-Bayesian analysis for a new generalization bound, novel regularization technique.
result New technique outperforms standard L2 regularization and is competitive with variance regularization. The paper tackles strategic behavior in decision-making with counterfactual explanations.
problem Finding optimal counterfactual explanations and policies in a strategic setting.
method NP-hard problem, greedy algorithm, submodularity, randomized algorithm, matroid constraint.
result Optimal counterfactual explanations and policies increase utility.
PyCFRL helps ensure fair reinforcement learning policies from offline data.
problem Ensuring fairness in reinforcement learning policies for disadvantaged groups.
method Sequential data preprocessing to learn counterfactually fair policies.
result PyCFRL implements a novel algorithm for fair RL policy learning.
Improves semantic parsing with human feedback in a counterfactual setup.
problem Expensive gold parses or answers for training semantic parsers.
method Convert model outputs to human-understandable statements for feedback.
result Significant improvement in semantic parsing through counterfactual learning.
Develops optimal decision-making framework for uncertain counterfactuals.
problem Ensuring reliability of predictions in high-stakes decisions.
method Policy-Coupled Risk-Averse Conformal Prediction (PC-RACP).
result Optimal prediction sets for counterfactual decisions with valid coverage.
This paper proposes a novel approach for constructing effective personalized policies when the observed data lacks counter-factual information, is biased and possesses many features. The approach is applicable in a wide variety of settings from healthcare to advertising to education to finance. These settings have in c…
Researchers use DT to transfer policies from one environment to another using causal reasoning.
problem Adapting to changes in environmental dynamics in reinforcement learning.
method Applying causal counterfactual reasoning to Decision Transformer (DT) architecture for policy transfer.
result DT successfully transfers a learned policy to new environments while retaining most of the reward.