scholarly journals The Neyman— Rubin Model of Causal Inference and Estimation Via Matching Methods

Author(s):  
Jasjeet Sekhon

This article presents a detailed discussion of the Neyman-Rubin model of causal inference. Additionally, it describes under what conditions ‘matching’ approaches can lead to valid inferences, and what kinds of compromises sometimes have to be made with respect to generalizability to ensure valid causal inferences. Moreover, the article summarizes Mill's first three canons and shows the importance of taking chance into account and comparing conditional probabilities when chance variations cannot be ignored. The significance of searching for causal mechanisms is often overestimated by political scientists and this sometimes leads to an underestimate of the importance of comparing conditional probabilities. The search for causal mechanisms is probably especially useful when working with observational data. Machine learning algorithms can be used against the matching problem.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshihiko Raita ◽  
Carlos A. Camargo ◽  
Liming Liang ◽  
Kohei Hasegawa

Clinicians handle a growing amount of clinical, biometric, and biomarker data. In this “big data” era, there is an emerging faith that the answer to all clinical and scientific questions reside in “big data” and that data will transform medicine into precision medicine. However, data by themselves are useless. It is the algorithms encoding causal reasoning and domain (e.g., clinical and biological) knowledge that prove transformative. The recent introduction of (health) data science presents an opportunity to re-think this data-centric view. For example, while precision medicine seeks to provide the right prevention and treatment strategy to the right patients at the right time, its realization cannot be achieved by algorithms that operate exclusively in data-driven prediction modes, as do most machine learning algorithms. Better understanding of data science and its tasks is vital to interpret findings and translate new discoveries into clinical practice. In this review, we first discuss the principles and major tasks of data science by organizing it into three defining tasks: (1) association and prediction, (2) intervention, and (3) counterfactual causal inference. Second, we review commonly-used data science tools with examples in the medical literature. Lastly, we outline current challenges and future directions in the fields of medicine, elaborating on how data science can enhance clinical effectiveness and inform medical practice. As machine learning algorithms become ubiquitous tools to handle quantitatively “big data,” their integration with causal reasoning and domain knowledge is instrumental to qualitatively transform medicine, which will, in turn, improve health outcomes of patients.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Delibalta ◽  
Lemi Baruh ◽  
Suleyman Serdar Kozat

We provide a causal inference framework to model the effects of machine learning algorithms on user preferences. We then use this mathematical model to prove that the overall system can be tuned to alter those preferences in a desired manner. A user can be an online shopper or a social media user, exposed to digital interventions produced by machine learning algorithms. A user preference can be anything from inclination towards a product to a political party affiliation. Our framework uses a state-space model to represent user preferences as latent system parameters which can only be observed indirectly via online user actions such as a purchase activity or social media status updates, shares, blogs, or tweets. Based on these observations, machine learning algorithms produce digital interventions such as targeted advertisements or tweets. We model the effects of these interventions through a causal feedback loop, which alters the corresponding preferences of the user. We then introduce algorithms in order to estimate and later tune the user preferences to a particular desired form. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms through experiments in different scenarios.


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 6579-6590
Author(s):  
Sandy Çağlıyor ◽  
Başar Öztayşi ◽  
Selime Sezgin

The motion picture industry is one of the largest industries worldwide and has significant importance in the global economy. Considering the high stakes and high risks in the industry, forecast models and decision support systems are gaining importance. Several attempts have been made to estimate the theatrical performance of a movie before or at the early stages of its release. Nevertheless, these models are mostly used for predicting domestic performances and the industry still struggles to predict box office performances in overseas markets. In this study, the aim is to design a forecast model using different machine learning algorithms to estimate the theatrical success of US movies in Turkey. From various sources, a dataset of 1559 movies is constructed. Firstly, independent variables are grouped as pre-release, distributor type, and international distribution based on their characteristic. The number of attendances is discretized into three classes. Four popular machine learning algorithms, artificial neural networks, decision tree regression and gradient boosting tree and random forest are employed, and the impact of each group is observed by compared by the performance models. Then the number of target classes is increased into five and eight and results are compared with the previously developed models in the literature.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Jie Liu ◽  
Lin Lin ◽  
Xiufang Liang

The online English teaching system has certain requirements for the intelligent scoring system, and the most difficult stage of intelligent scoring in the English test is to score the English composition through the intelligent model. In order to improve the intelligence of English composition scoring, based on machine learning algorithms, this study combines intelligent image recognition technology to improve machine learning algorithms, and proposes an improved MSER-based character candidate region extraction algorithm and a convolutional neural network-based pseudo-character region filtering algorithm. In addition, in order to verify whether the algorithm model proposed in this paper meets the requirements of the group text, that is, to verify the feasibility of the algorithm, the performance of the model proposed in this study is analyzed through design experiments. Moreover, the basic conditions for composition scoring are input into the model as a constraint model. The research results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper has a certain practical effect, and it can be applied to the English assessment system and the online assessment system of the homework evaluation system algorithm system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-80
Author(s):  
Eric Holloway

Detecting some patterns is a simple task for humans, but nearly impossible for current machine learning algorithms.  Here, the "checkerboard" pattern is examined, where human prediction nears 100% and machine prediction drops significantly below 50%.


Diabetes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 1290-P
Author(s):  
GIUSEPPE D’ANNUNZIO ◽  
ROBERTO BIASSONI ◽  
MARGHERITA SQUILLARIO ◽  
ELISABETTA UGOLOTTI ◽  
ANNALISA BARLA ◽  
...  

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