In this paper, we show the spooky effect at a distance that arises in optimal estimation of multiple targets with the optimal sub-pattern assignment (OSPA) metric. This effect refers to the fact that if we have several independent potential targets at distant locations, a change in the probability of existence of one o…
GraphTEE estimates treatment effects on graph-structured targets, mitigating bias.
problem Understanding treatment effects on graph-structured targets with observational bias.
method GraphTEE framework focusing on confounding variable sets and new regularization.
result GraphTEE mitigates bias better than previous methods.
Study shows targeting students with intermediate predicted outcomes is most effective for financial aid renewal.
problem Determining which students to target for financial aid renewal to maximize effectiveness.
method Used causal forest to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects and targeted students accordingly; compared targeting low vs high predicted probability outcomes.
result Targeting students with intermediate predicted outcomes yields the highest effectiveness in financial aid renewal.
New study finds targeting based on treatment effects outperforms risk-based targeting in social interventions.
problem Lack of accurate treatment effect estimates for machine learning-based targeting in social domains.
method Empirical assessment of targeting strategies using data from 5 real-world RCTs in various domains.
result Treatment effect-based targeting outperforms risk-based targeting, even with biased estimates.
SNAP efficiently identifies causal effects without needing full graph learning.
problem Efficiently estimating causal effects on a subset of variables.
method Sequential Non-Ancestor Pruning (SNAP) framework.
result SNAP reduces independence tests and computation time without sacrificing causal effect estimations.
Policy-gradient method controls multiple non-cohesive targets.
problem Controlling multiple non-cohesive targets in a decentralized manner.
method Proximal Policy Optimization for target selection and driving.
result Effective control of non-cohesive targets without prior dynamics knowledge.
This paper addresses external validity bias in causal inference.
problem Estimating causal effects in a target population.
method Synthesis of approaches for generalizability and transportability, including tests for heterogeneity of treatment effects and differences between study and target populations.
result Framework for addressing external validity bias in causal inference.
Framework optimizes targeting high-need individuals while estimating treatment effects.
problem Balancing resource allocation to high-need individuals with evaluating treatment effects.
method Proposes a framework to design randomized allocation rules that balance targeting high-need recipients with learning treatment effects.
result Optimized policies can significantly mitigate the tradeoff between targeting high-need individuals and estimating treatment effects.
PWSHAP provides targeted explanations for complex models.
problem Inability of black-box models to explain targeted effects in sensitive domains.
method Augments model with DAG, uses Shapley values for causal pathway identification.
result Establishes error bounds and demonstrates resolution, interpretability, and locality.
A novel framework synthesizes treatment data across sites using optimal transport.
problem Estimating treatment effects across different sites with varying conditions.
method Distributional causal inference, Optimal Transport for alignment of control group distributions.
result Synthetic treatment group data aligns with true target distribution under general conditions.
A new method estimates treatment effects in mixed groups, improving accuracy.
problem Estimating treatment effects in mixed groups with heterogeneous responses.
method PCM (pre-cluster and merge) approach for nonparametric estimation.
result Asymptotic consistency and significant improvement in accuracy over existing methods.
With the increasing variety of services that e-commerce platforms provide, criteria for evaluating their success become also increasingly multi-targeting. This work introduces a multi-target optimization framework with Bayesian modeling of the target events, called Deep Bayesian Multi-Target Learning (DBMTL). In this f…
GEFA predicts drug-target affinity using graph neural networks.
problem Accurate prediction of drug-target interactions for rapid drug repurposing.
method GEFA (Graph Early Fusion Affinity) is a novel graph-in-graph neural network with attention mechanism.
result GEFA effectively models drug-target interactions, demonstrating the effectiveness of pre-trained protein embedding and nested graph representation.
Transfer learning aims to faciliate learning tasks in a label-scarce target domain by leveraging knowledge from a related source domain with plenty of labeled data. Often times we may have multiple domains with little or no labeled data as targets waiting to be solved. Most existing efforts tackle target domains separa…
(Unsupervised) Domain Adaptation (DA) seeks for classifying target instances when solely provided with source labeled and target unlabeled examples for training. Learning domain-invariant features helps to achieve this goal, whereas it underpins unlabeled samples drawn from a single or multiple explicit target domains …
This paper evaluates targeted data poisoning attacks by focusing on the hardest samples, improving evaluation and defense strategies.
problem The effectiveness of targeted data poisoning attacks is often overestimated due to average evaluation methods.
method The paper introduces metrics to identify the hardest and easiest to poison samples based on clean model information.
result The proposed metrics reliably stratify samples by poisoning vulnerability, enabling rigorous worst-case evaluation and proactive defense.
Local causal structure learning aims to discover and distinguish direct causes (parents) and direct effects (children) of a variable of interest from data. While emerging successes have been made, existing methods need to search a large space to distinguish direct causes from direct effects of a target variable \emph{T…
Enhanced Bayesian target encoding uses sampling techniques to improve model performance.
problem Improving target encoding for better model performance in machine learning.
method Using sampling techniques in Bayesian target encoding to extract intra-category distribution information.
result Improves generalization and reduces target leakage in machine learning models.
The paper investigates how target normalization and momentum affect dying ReLUs in neural networks.
problem Understanding and mitigating the dying ReLU problem in neural networks.
method Empirical analysis and theoretical modeling of a discrete-time linear autonomous system.
result Target variance plays a crucial role in the dying ReLU phenomenon, and momentum exacerbates this issue.
Paper introduces IC-index to evaluate interaction prediction methods.
problem Evaluate interaction prediction methods using IC-index.
method IC-index measures interaction direction prediction performance.
result IC-index complements existing prediction performance estimators.
Adversarial examples are inputs to machine learning models designed by an adversary to cause an incorrect output. So far, adversarial examples have been studied most extensively in the image domain. In this domain, adversarial examples can be constructed by imperceptibly modifying images to cause misclassification, and…
We focus on the problem of search in the multilingual setting. Examining the problems of next-sentence prediction and inverse cloze, we show that at large scale, instance-based transfer learning is surprisingly effective in the multilingual setting, leading to positive transfer on all of the 35 target languages and two…
This research improves online learning by correcting for target shift in machine learning.
problem Online learning struggles with distributional shift, especially in target values.
method Derives closed-form expressions for online and offline learning, and target correction.
result Online kernel-based learning can learn the same predictor as offline learning with target correction.
For deep learning applications, the massive data development (e.g., collecting, labeling), which is an essential process in building practical applications, still incurs seriously high costs. In this work, we propose an effective data augmentation method based on generative adversarial networks (GANs), called Domain Fu…
Proposes a method to correct for covariate shift in meta-analysis of randomized trials.
problem Invalidation of standard IPD meta-analysis due to covariate shift across studies.
method Placebo-anchored transport framework that treats source-trial outcomes as proxy signals and target-trial placebo outcomes as gold labels.
result Yields target-identified effect estimates in connected targets and a principled screen--then--transport procedure in disconnected targets.
Study shows pretraining and finetuning can effectively tackle covariate shift in linear regression.
problem Linear regression under covariate shift where source and target distributions differ but conditional distribution remains similar.
method Pretraining on source data and finetuning on target data using online SGD.
result Transfer learning with O(N2) source data is as effective as supervised learning with N target data. The purpose of this note is two give a mathematical treatment to the low energy effective theory of the two-dimensional sigma model. Perhaps surprisingly, our low energy effective theory encodes much of the topology and geometry of the target manifold. In particular, we relate the β-function of our theory to the Ricc…
The paper tackles adaptive targeting in networks with interference effects.
problem Adaptive targeting under network interference in a bandit setting.
method Linear model in a sparse regime, analyzing different levels of knowledge of the interference structure.
result Unified view of how knowledge of the interference structure affects online learning efficiency.
Participants enrolled into randomized controlled trials (RCTs) often do not reflect real-world populations. Previous research in how best to translate RCT results to target populations has focused on weighting RCT data to look like the target data. Simulation work, however, has suggested that an outcome model approach …
Optimizes treatment allocation in networks considering indirect effects.
problem Finding optimal treatment allocation in network settings with interference.
method OTAPI: Optimizing Treatment Allocation in the Presence of Interference, integrating causal estimators into IM algorithms.
result OTAPI outperforms classic IM and UM approaches on synthetic and semi-synthetic datasets.
Paper proposes methods to reduce financial contagion by targeted cash injections.
problem Financial contagion through interconnected networks.
method Dynamic model of payments with external control term for corrective cash injections.
result Targeted cash injections can significantly reduce default propagation.
This work explores Target Networks and Functional Regularization in deep Reinforcement Learning.
problem Stability and performance issues in deep Reinforcement Learning due to target value instability.
method Proposes and studies an explicit Functional Regularization approach as a replacement for Target Networks.
result Functional Regularization improves performance and stability compared to Target Networks.
Distillation is an effective knowledge-transfer technique that uses predicted distributions of a powerful teacher model as soft targets to train a less-parameterized student model. A pre-trained high capacity teacher, however, is not always available. Recently proposed online variants use the aggregated intermediate pr…
Estimates vaccine effectiveness and immune correlates in TND studies with missing data.
problem Confounding and missing data in TND studies of vaccine effectiveness and immune correlates.
method Targeted maximum likelihood estimation using a semiparametric logistic regression model.
result Valid causal inference of vaccine effectiveness and immune correlates in TND studies with missing exposure data.
SVDD and Deep SVDD improve radar target detection in clutter.
problem Clutter and thermal noise degrade classical radar detection methods.
method Support Vector Data Description (SVDD) and Deep SVDD for one-class learning.
result SVDD and Deep SVDD outperform traditional methods on simulated radar data.
Target encoding is an effective technique to deliver better performance for conventional machine learning methods, and recently, for deep neural networks as well. However, the existing target encoding approaches require significant increase in the learning capacity, thus demand higher computation power and more trainin…
Estimates personalized policies robust to shifts in target populations.
problem Estimating policies that perform well in diverse target populations.
method Develops methods for estimating robust policies considering shifts in outcomes and characteristics.
result Welfare-maximizing policies are robust to certain shifts in potential outcomes.
We propose a probabilistic model for refining coarse-grained spatial data by utilizing auxiliary spatial data sets. Existing methods require that the spatial granularities of the auxiliary data sets are the same as the desired granularity of target data. The proposed model can effectively make use of auxiliary data set…
Neural networks learn the support of the target function through SGD's implicit regularization effect.
problem Learning the support of the target function in neural networks.
method Investigation of mini-batch SGD's ability to learn the support in the first layer of a neural network.
result Mini-batch SGD effectively learns the support in the first layer by shrinking irrelevant weights, while vanilla GD requires an explicit regularization term.
This work transfers causal knowledge between tasks for Individual Treatment Effect estimation.
problem Estimating Individual Treatment Effects (ITE) requires a large amount of data, making it challenging.
method The authors introduce a practical framework for efficient transfer of causal knowledge between tasks, using a Causal Inference Task Affinity (CITA) measure.
result ITE knowledge transfer can significantly reduce the amount of data needed for ITE estimation.
Paper tackles target shift in zero-shot learning using adversarial learning.
problem Target shift in zero-shot learning leads to performance degradation.
method Estimates target shift using class-attribute mapping and applies grouped adversarial learning.
result Improves zero-shot learning performance on multiple datasets.
This paper studies the problem of optimally allocating treatments in the presence of spillover effects, using information from a (quasi-)experiment. I introduce a method that maximizes the sample analog of average social welfare when spillovers occur. I construct semi-parametric welfare estimators with known and unknow…
Generates counterfactuals in target domain from source domain observations.
problem Cross-domain learning with domain shifts and lack of parallel datasets.
method Unsupervised, Neural Causal Models, Joint Causal Graphs, Effect-Intrinsic vs Domain-Intrinsic Variables.
result Framework generates counterfactuals that closely match ground truth.
Paper explains learning property of logistic and softmax losses for balanced and imbalanced class data.
problem Understanding and optimizing loss functions for deep neural networks with class imbalances.
method Analyzing necessary conditions for convergence of logistic and softmax losses in CNNs.
result Proposes a novel reweighted logistic loss function that improves performance over softmax loss.
Transfer learning aims to improve learning in target domain by borrowing knowledge from a related but different source domain. To reduce the distribution shift between source and target domains, recent methods have focused on exploring invariant representations that have similar distributions across domains. However, w…
New method estimates treatment effects over time for survival data, improving accuracy and smoothness.
problem Estimating treatment effects over time for survival data with left truncation and right censoring.
method surv-iTMLE, a targeted learning procedure for estimating conditional survival probabilities.
result surv-iTMLE outperforms existing methods in bias and smoothness of time-varying effect estimates.
RL policy tracks dynamic targets in partially known environments robustly.
problem Active target tracking in partially known environments.
method Deep reinforcement learning (RL) approach for in-sight tracking, navigation, and exploration.
result Unified RL policy shows robust behavior for agile and anomalous targets.
Proposes a model to estimate effects of multiple related treatments.
problem Estimating effects of many related treatments in observational data.
method Customized ridge regression to reduce noise and MSE.
result Significantly reduces MSE for individual sub-treatments while allowing reconstruction of aggregated treatment effects.