Causal discovery from data affected by latent confounders is an important and difficult challenge. Causal functional model-based approaches have not been used to present variables whose relationships are affected by latent confounders, while some constraint-based methods can present them. This paper proposes a causal f…
New method recovers latent confounders from high-dimensional proxy variables.
problem Detecting latent confounders from high-dimensional proxy variables.
method Proxy Confounder Factorization (PCF) framework using ICA-PCF and GD-PCF.
result ICA-PCF recovers confounders with high correlation and low error in synthetic and real-world data.
Paper compares two methods for inferring network structures in presence of latent confounders.
problem Inferring network structures in presence of latent confounders.
method Gaussian graphical models with latent variables (LVGGM) and PCA-based removal of confounding (PCA+GGM).
result Proposes a new method combining strengths of LVGGM and PCA+GGM, proving consistency and convergence rate.
Paper uses Gaussian processes to handle shared latent confounders in causal inference.
problem Bias in causal effect estimates due to shared latent confounders.
method Hierarchical Bayesian model, Gaussian processes with structured latent confounders (GP-SLC), Monte Carlo inference algorithm.
result GP-SLC provides accurate estimates of individual treatment effects with minimal assumptions.
New approach for causal inference with interdependent, time-varying latent confounders.
problem Estimating causal effects with interdependent, time-varying latent confounders.
method Variational estimation with a representer theorem and random input space.
result Demonstrates effectiveness on various temporal datasets.
Estimating the individual treatment effect (ITE) from observational data is essential in medicine. A central challenge in estimating the ITE is handling confounders, which are factors that affect both an intervention and its outcome. Most previous work relies on the unconfoundedness assumption, which posits that all th…
Proxy methods adapt to distribution shifts without explicitly modeling latent confounders.
problem Adapting to distribution shifts under latent variable confounding.
method Proximal causal learning, two-stage kernel estimation.
result Proxy methods outperform other methods in adapting to complex distribution shifts.
CARE improves LLM aggregation by accounting for shared confounders.
problem LLM judges' correlated errors due to shared latent confounders.
method CARE explicitly models judges' scores as true quality and confounders.
result CARE reduces aggregation error by up to 26.8% across various benchmarks.
A novel disentangled graph autoencoder improves treatment effect estimation from networked observational data.
problem Treatment effect estimation from observational data is challenging due to unconfoundedness assumption and latent confounders.
method Proposes a disentangled variational graph autoencoder to disentangle latent factors and enforce factor independence.
result Extensive experiments show superior performance compared to state-of-the-art approaches.
New method estimates latent gene expression factors without overlap with known confounders.
problem Estimating latent variance components in gene expression data with known confounders.
method Restricted maximum-likelihood method maximizing likelihood on orthogonal subspace.
result Method reduces runtime and attains greater likelihood values than gradient-based optimizers.
We consider learning a causal ordering of variables in a linear non-Gaussian acyclic model called LiNGAM. Several existing methods have been shown to consistently estimate a causal ordering assuming that all the model assumptions are correct. But, the estimation results could be distorted if some assumptions actually a…
We consider learning the possible causal direction of two observed variables in the presence of latent confounding variables. Several existing methods have been shown to consistently estimate causal direction assuming linear or some type of nonlinear relationship and no latent confounders. However, the estimation resul…
Evaluating novel contextual bandit policies using logged data is crucial in applications where exploration is costly, such as medicine. But it usually relies on the assumption of no unobserved confounders, which is bound to fail in practice. We study the question of policy evaluation when we instead have proxies for th…
This paper corrects climate model biases using a factor model approach.
problem Systematic biases in GCM outputs due to unobserved confounders.
method Factor model approach to learn latent confounders from historical data and apply them to enhance bias correction.
result Significant improvements in the accuracy of precipitation outputs.
Intact-VAE estimates treatment effects with latent confounders.
problem Estimating treatment effects under unobserved confounding.
method Intact-VAE, a VAE variant, models latent confounders to identify treatment effects.
result Intact-VAE is a consistent estimator of treatment effects under certain settings.
Estimates network causal effects considering contagion and latent confounding.
problem Determining if correlations in network studies are due to contagion or latent confounding.
method Segregated graph representation, likelihood ratio tests, network causal effect estimation strategies.
result Proposes methods to estimate network causal effects under full interference scenarios.
The paper identifies causal effects in latent variable models using higher-order cumulants.
problem Challenges in identifying causal effects in latent variable models with latent confounders.
method Using higher-order cumulants, the paper addresses two challenging setups: a single proxy variable and underspecified instrumental variables.
result Causal effects are identifiable with a single proxy or instrument.
New method identifies causal direction with latent confounders.
problem Identifying causal direction in presence of multiple latent variables.
method Use of joint higher-order cumulant matrix properties.
result Causal asymmetry can be seen from rank deficiency properties of cumulant matrices.
Novel graphical models for time series with latent confounders improve causal inference.
problem Causal relationships and independencies in multivariate time series with unobserved confounders.
method Introduced a novel class of graphical models and characterized their properties.
result Novel graphs provide stronger causal inferences without additional assumptions.
Study tackles OPE in confounded settings, estimating policy value from proxies.
problem Difficulty in OPE due to unobserved confounders in infinite-horizon RL.
method Two-stage approach: estimating stationary distribution ratios and combining optimal balancing.
result Policy value can be identified from off-policy data with proxies and latent variable model.
Learning individual-level causal effects from observational data, such as inferring the most effective medication for a specific patient, is a problem of growing importance for policy makers. The most important aspect of inferring causal effects from observational data is the handling of confounders, factors that affec…
New method disentangles latent factors for better treatment effect estimation.
problem Estimating treatment effects from observational data when confounders are not the only variables.
method Variational inference to disentangle latent factors into instrumental, confounding, and risk factors.
result The method improves treatment effect estimation accuracy on various datasets.
The study uses pre-trained neural networks to adjust for confounding in non-tabular data.
problem Neglecting non-tabular data sources can lead to biased ATE estimates.
method Leverages latent features from pre-trained neural networks to adjust for confounding.
result Neural networks can achieve fast convergence rates for ATE estimation with latent features.
FoundCause: Causal Discovery with Latent Confounders from Observational Data
problem Causal discovery from observational data
method FoundCause, an amortized causal discovery model trained on synthetic data
result FoundCause outperforms classical and amortized methods on real-world datasets
New algorithm identifies causal effects in latent confounding models.
problem Identifying causal effects in linear non-Gaussian models with latent confounding.
method Recursive algorithm using rank conditions on higher-order cumulants.
result Algorithm achieves comparable performance to overcomplete ICA without knowing the number of latent variables.
Scalable GPLVM reduces complexity in scRNA-seq data, accounting for technical and biological confounders.
problem Complexity and confounders in scRNA-seq data hamper interpretation.
method Extended Gaussian process latent variable model (GPLVM) to handle large datasets.
result Framework reconstructs latent signatures and captures disease-specific gene expression.
Study identifies parameters in causal models with latent confounding.
problem Parameter identification in linear non-Gaussian causal models with latent confounding.
method Graphical criterion for necessary and sufficient identifiability of direct causal effects, with polynomial-time algorithm.
result Developed a graphical criterion for identifying direct causal effects in latent variable models with arbitrary non-linear confounding.
A hybrid method for causal discovery in latent confounders.
problem Estimating linear non-Gaussian models with latent confounders.
method Hybrid approach combining FCI and ICA.
result Hybrid method uniquely identifies causal relations under mild assumptions.
dcFCI discovers causal relationships robustly under latent confounding and mixed data.
problem Causal discovery under latent confounding and unfaithfulness.
method dcFCI integrates a new score to assess PAG compatibility, guided by FCI search.
result Significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in small and heterogeneous datasets.
Granger causality analysis, as one of the most popular time series causality methods, has been widely used in the economics, neuroscience. However, unobserved confounders is a fundamental problem in the observational studies, which is still not solved for the non-linear Granger causality. The application works often de…
SPOT improves differentiable causal discovery by estimating skeleton posterior for latent confounders.
problem Scalable and accurate estimation of causal skeletons in the presence of latent confounders.
method SPOT (Skeleton Posterior-guided OpTimization) framework that estimates skeleton posterior and integrates it with differentiable causal discovery.
result SPOT enhances differentiable causal discovery by reducing the search space and improving accuracy.
Proposes a new VAE model to estimate treatment effects from confounded data.
problem Estimating treatment effects in the presence of confounding variables.
method Intact-VAE, a variant of variational autoencoder (VAE), using a latent variable for confounders.
result Proves identification of treatment effects under unconfoundedness and shows state-of-the-art performance.
Spatial Deconfounder tackles interference and confounding in spatial data.
problem Interference and unmeasured spatial factors confound causal inference in spatial domains.
method Two-stage method using CVAE with spatial prior to reconstruct confounder, then estimate causal effects.
result Nonparametric identification of direct and spillover effects under weak assumptions.
The paper analyzes identifiability in ODE systems with hidden confounders.
problem Identifiability of ODE systems with hidden confounders.
method Systematic analysis of identifiability in linear ODE systems with hidden confounders, considering both no causal relationships and causal dependencies.
result Comprehensive identifiability analysis of ODE systems with hidden confounders, including causal dependencies.
Causal inference from observational data requires assumptions. These assumptions range from measuring confounders to identifying instruments. Traditionally, causal inference assumptions have focused on estimation of effects for a single treatment. In this work, we construct techniques for estimation with multiple treat…
CausalEGM estimates causal effects by encoding confounders, improving performance in high-dimensional settings.
problem Challenges in estimating causal effects with high-dimensional confounders.
method CausalEGM framework using generative modeling to decouple confounders and estimate causal effects.
result CausalEGM outperforms existing methods in binary and continuous treatment settings, especially with large sample sizes and high-dimensional confounders.
Despite impressive performance on many text classification tasks, deep neural networks tend to learn frequent superficial patterns that are specific to the training data and do not always generalize well. In this work, we observe this limitation with respect to the task of native language identification. We find that s…
We consider the task of learning a causal graph in the presence of latent confounders given i.i.d.~samples from the model. While current algorithms for causal structure discovery in the presence of latent confounders are constraint-based, we here propose a score-based approach. We prove that under assumptions weaker th…
New method improves causal discovery in time series with latent confounders.
problem Low recall in causal discovery for autocorrelated time series with latent confounders.
method Iterative procedure that includes causal parents in conditioning sets, using novel orientation rules.
result Significantly higher recall compared to existing methods, especially in strong autocorrelation cases.
Proposes a new condition to estimate latent variable causal graphs from observed data.
problem Estimating causal structures when observed variables are not the underlying causal variables.
method Introduces Generalized Independent Noise (GIN) condition and a recursive learning algorithm.
result Shows that GIN helps locate latent variables and identify their causal structure.
New method identifies root causes in presence of latent confounding.
problem Identifying root causes in the presence of latent variables.
method Extract Errors with Latents (EEL) procedure for inferring root causes.
result Superior accuracy and robustness compared to previous methods.
New method uses variational inference to handle confounding in imitation learning.
problem Confounding due to different sensory inputs between expert and imitating agent.
method Train variational inference model to infer expert's latent information and use for latent-conditional policy training.
result Algorithm converges to correct interventional policy and achieves asymptotically optimal performance.
ContiVAE estimates individual dose-response curves from unobserved confounders using observational data.
problem Estimating causal effects of continuous treatments considering unobserved confounders.
method Variational auto-encoder with a Tilted Gaussian prior distribution modeling hidden confounders as latent variables.
result ContiVAE outperforms existing methods by up to 62% in predicting individual dose-response curves.
Algorithm recovers causal graphs in presence of latent confounders and selection bias.
problem Recovering causal graphs in the presence of latent confounders and selection bias.
method Iterative causal discovery (ICD) algorithm that relies on causal Markov and faithfulness assumptions.
result Sound and complete algorithm that recovers the equivalence class of the underlying causal graph.
We prove the main rules of causal calculus (also called do-calculus) for i/o structural causal models (ioSCMs), a generalization of a recently proposed general class of non-/linear structural causal models that allow for cycles, latent confounders and arbitrary probability distributions. We also generalize adjustment c…
Extends linear structural causal models to include deterministic relations and latent confounders for causal discovery.
problem Causal discovery in linear SCMs with deterministic relations and latent confounders.
method Extended existing results to include deterministic relations and latent confounders, derived necessary and sufficient conditions for unique identifiability, proposed an algorithm for recovery.
result First work on identifiability results for causal discovery under latent confounding and deterministic relationships.
Paper proposes a new method to identify causal graphs with latent variables using higher-order cumulants.
problem Estimating causal directed acyclic graphs with latent confounders.
method Uses higher-order cumulants to identify causal structures among observed and latent variables.
result Validates the proposed algorithm through simulations and real-world data.
Unified framework for large-scale hypothesis testing with confounders.
problem Bias in large-scale hypothesis testing due to unmeasured confounders.
method Unified statistical estimation and inference framework that disentangles confounding effects and jointly estimates latent and primary effects.
result Effective Type-I error control and power in hypothesis testing.