Related papers: On the definition of a confounder
Conditioning on some set of confounders that causally affect both treatment and outcome variables can be sufficient for eliminating bias introduced by all such confounders when estimating causal effect of the treatment on the outcome from…
Confounding seriously impairs our ability to learn about causal relations from observational data. Confounding can be defined as a statistical association between two variables due to inputs from a common source (the confounder). For…
We propose a method to distinguish causal influence from hidden confounding in the following scenario: given a target variable Y, potential causal drivers X, and a large number of background features, we propose a novel criterion for…
Detecting and measuring confounding effects from data is a key challenge in causal inference. Existing methods frequently assume causal sufficiency, disregarding the presence of unobserved confounding variables. Causal sufficiency is both…
Inferring the causal effect of a treatment on an outcome in an observational study requires adjusting for observed baseline confounders to avoid bias. However, adjusting for all observed baseline covariates, when only a subset are…
Confounding matters in almost all observational studies that focus on causality. In order to eliminate bias caused by connfounders, oftentimes a substantial number of features need to be collected in the analysis. In this case, large p…
This research addresses the challenge of conducting interpretable causal inference between a binary treatment and its resulting outcome when not all confounders are known. Confounders are factors that have an influence on both the treatment…
Recently, interest has grown in the use of proxy variables of unobserved confounding for inferring the causal effect in the presence of unmeasured confounders from observational data. One difficulty inhibiting the practical use is finding…
The goal of recommendation is to show users items that they will like. Though usually framed as a prediction, the spirit of recommendation is to answer an interventional question---for each user and movie, what would the rating be if we…
Causal inference from observational data often assumes "ignorability," that all confounders are observed. This assumption is standard yet untestable. However, many scientific studies involve multiple causes, different variables whose…
Confounder selection is perhaps the most important step in the design of observational studies. A number of criteria, often with different objectives and approaches, have been proposed, and their validity and practical value have been…
Causal inference with observational data can be performed under an assumption of no unobserved confounders (unconfoundedness assumption). There is, however, seldom clear subject-matter or empirical evidence for such an assumption. We…
Proximal causal inference (PCI) has emerged as a promising framework for identifying and estimating causal effects in the presence of unobserved confounders. While many traditional causal inference methods rely on the assumption of no…
Identifying effects of actions (treatments) on outcome variables from observational data and causal assumptions is a fundamental problem in causal inference. This identification is made difficult by the presence of confounders which can be…
In this paper we provide a theoretical analysis of counterfactual invariance. We present a variety of existing definitions, study how they relate to each other and what their graphical implications are. We then turn to the current major…
To unbiasedly estimate a causal effect on an outcome unconfoundedness is often assumed. If there is sufficient knowledge on the underlying causal structure then existing confounder selection criteria can be used to select subsets of the…
A common assumption in causal inference from observational data is that there is no hidden confounding. Yet it is, in general, impossible to verify this assumption from a single dataset. Under the assumption of independent causal mechanisms…
Unobserved confounding is a fundamental challenge for estimating causal effects. To address unobserved confounding, recent literature has turned to two different approaches -- proxy variables and the use of multiple treatments. The first…
We study a model where one target variable Y is correlated with a vector X:=(X_1,...,X_d) of predictor variables being potential causes of Y. We describe a method that infers to what extent the statistical dependences between X and Y are…
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…