New method better identifies irrelevant variables for more accurate treatment effect estimation.
problem Handling irrelevant variables in treatment effect estimation with deep disentanglement.
method Deep embedding method to disentangle pre-treatment variables, explicitly identify and represent irrelevant variables, and orthogonalize them.
result Better identification and representation of irrelevant variables lead to more precise treatment effect prediction.
When applied to high-dimensional datasets, feature selection algorithms might still leave dozens of irrelevant variables in the dataset. Therefore, even after feature selection has been applied, classifiers must be prepared to the presence of irrelevant variables. This paper investigates a new training method called Co…
The problem of finding a reduced dimensionality representation of categorical variables while preserving their most relevant characteristics is fundamental for the analysis of complex data. Specifically, given a co-occurrence matrix of two variables, one often seeks a compact representation of one variable which preser…
The paper investigates how irrelevant features affect clustering performance.
problem The challenge of identifying relevant features in unsupervised clustering tasks.
method Investigation of clustering performance with added irrelevant features.
result Different types of irrelevant features impact clustering outcomes differently.
XGBoost fails to accurately identify relevant features, while interpretable methods do.
problem Accurately identifying relevant features in black-box models like XGBoost.
method Comparison of variable importance methods (CART, Optimal Trees, XGBoost, SHAP) across various experiments.
result Interpretable methods outperform black-box models in feature selection accuracy.
LLMs are vulnerable to task-irrelevant data changes, limiting their use for data fitting.
problem LLMs' sensitivity to task-irrelevant variations in data representation.
method Analysis of LLMs' performance and attention patterns under various data manipulations.
result LLMs are sensitive to task-irrelevant variations, leading to significant prediction errors.
Study of local optima in neural networks for feature interactions.
problem NNs struggle with local optima in feature interactions for small datasets.
method Proposed a node pruning and feature selection algorithm to improve NN performance.
result NNs have many non-equivalent local optima in XOR-like data with irrelevant variables.
Improved interpretability methods for ML models using local regressions and variable importance.
problem Inability of existing interpretability methods to provide reliable explanations for ML models, especially in high-dimensional problems with irrelevant features and non-linear relationships.
method Introduces VarImp and SupClus methods using local regressions with weighted distance considering variable importance.
result VarImp and SupClus methods yield better explanations than state-of-the-art approaches, especially in high-dimensional problems with irrelevant features and non-linear relationships.
We focus on credal nets, which are graphical models that generalise Bayesian nets to imprecise probability. We replace the notion of strong independence commonly used in credal nets with the weaker notion of epistemic irrelevance, which is arguably more suited for a behavioural theory of probability. Focusing on direct…
We aim to create the highest possible quality of treatment-control matches for categorical data in the potential outcomes framework. Matching methods are heavily used in the social sciences due to their interpretability, but most matching methods do not pass basic sanity checks: they fail when irrelevant variables are …
Regularization is a popular technique in machine learning for model estimation and avoiding overfitting. Prior studies have found that modern ordered regularization can be more effective in handling highly correlated, high-dimensional data than traditional regularization. The reason stems from the fact that the ordered…
High-dimensional data acquired from biological experiments such as next generation sequencing are subject to a number of confounding effects. These effects include both technical effects, such as variation across batches from instrument noise or sample processing, or institution-specific differences in sample acquisiti…
Statistical inference is considered for variables of interest, called primary variables, when auxiliary variables are observed along with the primary variables. We consider the setting of incomplete data analysis, where some primary variables are not observed. Utilizing a parametric model of joint distribution of prima…
CIB compresses variables causally, preserving key causal interactions.
problem Constructing causal variable abstractions in complex systems.
method Causal Information Bottleneck (CIB) method, extending IB to include causal structures.
result CIB produces causally interpretable abstractions that accurately capture causal relations.
Transformers can learn optimal variable selection in group-sparse classification.
problem Understanding how transformers leverage attention to select relevant variables in group-sparse classification.
method Training a one-layer transformer using gradient descent to select variables from one group of input variables.
result A one-layer transformer can correctly leverage the attention mechanism to select variables, disregarding irrelevant ones.
Adaptive feature normalization improves model robustness to extraneous variables.
problem Degrading model performance due to extraneous variables in deep learning.
method Adaptive feature normalization using instance normalization instead of batch normalization.
result Adaptive normalization leads to significant performance gains across different datasets and architectures.
Complex systems can be modelled at various levels of detail. Ideally, causal models of the same system should be consistent with one another in the sense that they agree in their predictions of the effects of interventions. We formalise this notion of consistency in the case of Structural Equation Models (SEMs) by intr…
Sparse PCA selects variables with FDR control for improved performance.
problem Sparse PCA selects irrelevant variables when maximizing explained variance.
method Proposes FDR-controlled selection using T-Rex selector.
result Significant performance improvement over traditional sparse PCA.
This paper presents a new fuzzy k-means algorithm for the clustering of high-dimensional data in various subspaces. Since high-dimensional data, some features might be irrelevant and relevant but may have different significance in the clustering process. For better clustering, it is crucial to incorporate the contribut…
Paper proposes knockoff-based methods to simplify deep neural networks by controlling false discovery rates.
problem High-dimensional deep neural networks with many irrelevant parameters and inputs.
method Knockoff methods combined with regularized neural networks for variable screening.
result Proposed algorithms show satisfactory performance in controlling false discovery rates.
Leveraging on the convexity of the Lasso problem , screening rules help in accelerating solvers by discarding irrelevant variables, during the optimization process. However, because they provide better theoretical guarantees in identifying relevant variables, several non-convex regularizers for the Lasso have been prop…
A game-theoretic approach selects features by testing their marginal contributions.
problem Feature selection in econometric and statistical models.
method A coalitional game where features are players and payoff is model performance. Hypothesis test decides feature relevance.
result The approach significantly outperforms existing methods in simulations.
Screening rules allow to early discard irrelevant variables from the optimization in Lasso problems, or its derivatives, making solvers faster. In this paper, we propose new versions of the so-called safe rules for the Lasso. Based on duality gap considerations, our new rules create safe test regions whose d…
A new fairness metric for decision-making algorithms, conditioning on known fair variables.
problem Fairness issues in decision-making systems.
method Conditional fairness metric, Derivable Conditional Fairness Regularizer (DCFR), adversarial representation.
result Traditional fairness notations are special cases of the new conditional fairness notation.
When applying the support vector machine (SVM) to high-dimensional classification problems, we often impose a sparse structure in the SVM to eliminate the influences of the irrelevant predictors. The lasso and other variable selection techniques have been successfully used in the SVM to perform automatic variable selec…
We propose a novel application of the Simultaneous Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (S-OMP) procedure for sparsistant variable selection in ultra-high dimensional multi-task regression problems. Screening of variables, as introduced in \cite{fan08sis}, is an efficient and highly scalable way to remove many irrelevant variab…
Kernel embeddings of distributions and the Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD), the resulting distance between distributions, are useful tools for fully nonparametric two-sample testing and learning on distributions. However, it is rarely that all possible differences between samples are of interest -- discovered difference…
Deep state space model forecasts time series with uncertainty.
problem Probabilistic forecasting for risk management.
method Parameterized deep networks for non-linear models, recurrent neural nets for dependency, ARD network for exogenous variables.
result Accurate and sharp probabilistic forecasts with realistic uncertainty growth.
Random forests is a common non-parametric regression technique which performs well for mixed-type data and irrelevant covariates, while being robust to monotonic variable transformations. Existing random forest implementations target regression or classification. We introduce the RFCDE package for fitting random forest…
Exclusive Lasso improves survival prediction in cancer datasets.
problem Enhanced survival prediction in cancer datasets with high-dimensional genomic and clinical data.
method Proposes Exclusive Lasso regularization for feature selection in Cox regression models for grouped variables.
result Demonstrates improved survival prediction performance using Exclusive Lasso compared to standard Cox regression.
Paper tackles robust domain adaptation without target domain data.
problem Learning domain invariant representations without target domain data.
method Integrates deep autoencoder and causal structure learning into a unified model.
result CAE learns causal representations using only source domain data.
Causal effect estimation from observational data is an important and much studied research topic. The instrumental variable (IV) and local causal discovery (LCD) patterns are canonical examples of settings where a closed-form expression exists for the causal effect of one variable on another, given the presence of a th…
Improved RL for TBGs by pruning irrelevant tokens and bootstrapping.
problem RL methods fail to generalize in TBGs with small data.
method CREST for irrelevant token removal, bootstrapped Q-learning.
result Improved generalization in unseen TextWorld games.
Variables in many massive high-dimensional data sets are structured, arising for example from measurements on a regular grid as in imaging and time series or from spatial-temporal measurements as in climate studies. Classical multivariate techniques ignore these structural relationships often resulting in poor performa…
Both the median-based classifier and the quantile-based classifier are useful for discriminating high-dimensional data with heavy-tailed or skewed inputs. But these methods are restricted as they assign equal weight to each variable in an unregularized way. The ensemble quantile classifier is a more flexible regularize…
This paper simplifies OPE in large state spaces using state abstractions.
problem Accurately evaluating policies offline in large state spaces.
method Developed a backward-model-irrelevance condition and an iterative state abstraction procedure.
result Deeply-abstracted states substantially simplify OPE sample complexity.
Estimating the difficulty level of math word problems is an important task for many educational applications. Identification of relevant and irrelevant sentences in math word problems is an important step for calculating the difficulty levels of such problems. This paper addresses a novel application of text categoriza…
Statistical inference can be computationally prohibitive in ultrahigh-dimensional linear models. Correlation-based variable screening, in which one leverages marginal correlations for removal of irrelevant variables from the model prior to statistical inference, can be used to overcome this challenge. Prior works on co…
Method learns representations invariant to task-irrelevant details in reinforcement learning tasks.
problem Learning representations that are invariant to task-irrelevant details in reinforcement learning.
method Uses bisimulation metrics to learn robust latent representations that encode only task-relevant information.
result Demonstrates SOTA performance in modified visual MuJoCo tasks and a first-person driving task.
A scalable algorithm for GP regression selects relevant covariates efficiently.
problem Scalable variable selection in large GP regression models.
method VGPR algorithm using Vecchia approximation for sparse precision matrix, mini-batch subsampling.
result Improved scalability and accuracy in selecting relevant covariates.
A new knockoff statistic using conditional prediction function improves variable selection in complex models.
problem Controlling false discovery rate in complex models with nonlinear relationships.
method Introducing a knockoff statistic based on the conditional prediction function for use with machine learning models.
result The CPF statistics provide superior power in detecting prognostic variables over existing knockoff statistics.
LassoFlexNet improves deep learning performance on tabular data.
problem Deep learning underperforms tree-based models on tabular data.
method Incorporates five inductive biases and uses Tied Group Lasso for variable selection.
result LassoFlexNet matches or outperforms leading tree-based models on 52 datasets.
Adaptive LASSO improves model selection for functional geostatistical data.
problem Modeling georeferenced data with spatiotemporal dynamics and functional coefficients.
method Penalized maximum likelihood estimator with adaptive LASSO penalty for simultaneous selection of spline basis functions and regressors.
result The penalized estimator outperforms the unpenalized estimator in all scenarios tested.
OSIRIS reduces variance in off-policy evaluation by omitting irrelevant states.
problem High variance in importance sampling-based OPE estimators.
method OSIRIS reduces variance by omitting likelihood ratios associated with states irrelevant to return.
result OSIRIS is unbiased and has lower variance than ordinary importance sampling.
New rules reduce SLOPE model fitting time by screening out irrelevant variables.
problem Expensive tuning of regularization parameter in penalized regression models.
method Strong screening rules for group-based SLOPE models.
result Significant acceleration of fitting process for Group SLOPE and sparse-group SLOPE.
The method approximates stationary distributions of Markov models by truncating irrelevant states.
problem Computing the stationary distribution of complex Markov models is computationally challenging.
method A state-space lumping scheme that aggregates states in a grid structure, iteratively refining the state-space.
result The method provides a well-justified finite-state projection tailored to the stationary behavior of Markov models.
FSRM method improves treatment effect estimation from observational data.
problem Estimating treatment effects from observational data with missing counterfactual outcomes and selection bias.
method FSRM method based on deep representation learning and matching, which maps covariate space into a selective, nonlinear, and balanced representation space.
result FSRM method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in estimating treatment effects.
Anisotropic neural network selects relevant features from datasets.
problem Reduction of irrelevant features improves model interpretability and performance.
method General Regression Neural Network with an anisotropic Gaussian Kernel.
result The method robustly selects features from simulated and real-world datasets.