English
Related papers

Related papers: A Common Misassumption in Online Experiments with …

200 papers

The hypothesis of randomness is fundamental in statistical machine learning and in many areas of nonparametric statistics; it says that the observations are assumed to be independent and coming from the same unknown probability…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-02-08 Vladimir Vovk

Experimentation in online digital platforms is used to inform decision making. Specifically, the goal of many experiments is to optimize a metric of interest. Null hypothesis statistical testing can be ill-suited to this task, as it is…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-12-10 Timothy Sudijono , Simon Ejdemyr , Apoorva Lal , Martin Tingley

Counterfactual explanations are widely used to interpret machine learning predictions by identifying minimal changes to input features that would alter a model's decision. However, most existing counterfactual methods have not been tested…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Leonidas Christodoulou , Chang Sun

Robustness verification of neural networks, referring to formally proving that neural networks satisfy robustness properties, is of crucial importance in safety-critical applications, where model failures can result in loss of human life or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Minh Le , Phuong Cao

In industry, online randomized controlled experiment (a.k.a. A/B experiment) is a standard approach to measure the impact of a causal change. These experiments have small treatment effect to reduce the potential blast radius. As a result,…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-05-29 Tanmoy Das , Dohyeon Lee , Arnab Sinha

On-line experimentation (also known as A/B testing) has become an integral part of software development. To timely incorporate user feedback and continuously improve products, many software companies have adopted the culture of agile…

Applications · Statistics 2019-08-13 Yu Wang , Somit Gupta , Jiannan Lu , Ali Mahmoudzadeh , Sophia Liu

In A/B testing two variants of a piece of software are compared in the field from an end user's point of view, enabling data-driven decision making. While widely used in practice, no comprehensive study has been conducted on the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-08-10 Federico Quin , Danny Weyns , Matthias Galster , Camila Costa Silva

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been the cornerstone of clinical evidence; however, their cost, duration, and restrictive eligibility criteria limit power and external validity. Studies using real-world data (RWD), historically…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-11-26 Shu Yang , Margaret Gamalo , Haoda Fu

A/B testing is an important decision-making tool in product development for evaluating user engagement or satisfaction from a new service, feature or product. The goal of A/B testing is to estimate the average treatment effects (ATE) of a…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-08-21 Yifan Zhou , Yang Liu , Ping Li , Feifang Hu

A/B testing, or controlled experiments, is the gold standard approach to causally compare the performance of algorithms on online platforms. However, conventional Bernoulli randomization in A/B testing faces many challenges such as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-13 Yongkang Guo , Yuan Yuan , Jinshan Zhang , Yuqing Kong , Zhihua Zhu , Zheng Cai

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have long been the gold standard for causal inference across various fields, including business analysis, economic studies, sociology, clinical research, and network learning. The primary advantage of…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-08-23 Carol Liu

A/B testing is the foundation of decision-making in online platforms, yet social products often suffer from network interference: user interactions cause treatment effects to spill over into the control group. Such spillovers bias causal…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Xu Min , Zhaoxu Yang , Kaixuan Tan , Juan Yan , Xunbin Xiong , Zihao Zhu , Kaiyu Zhu , Fenglin Cui , Yang Yang , Sihua Yang , Jianhui Bu

We investigate what specific design choices enable successful online reinforcement learning (RL) on physical robots. Across 100 real-world training runs on three distinct robotic platforms, we systematically ablate algorithmic, systems, and…

We propose a new variant of online learning that we call "ambiguous online learning". In this setting, the learner is allowed to produce multiple predicted labels. Such an "ambiguous prediction" is considered correct when at least one of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Vanessa Kosoy

Controlled experiments (A/B tests or randomized field experiments) are the de facto standard to make data-driven decisions when implementing changes and observing customer responses. The methodology to analyze such experiments should be…

Applications · Statistics 2020-03-06 Shafi Kamalbasha , Manuel J. A. Eugster

With the extensive use of digital devices, online experimental platforms are commonly used to conduct experiments to collect data for evaluating different variations of products, algorithms, and interface designs, a.k.a., A/B tests. In…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-09 Qiong Zhang , Lulu Kang , Xinwei Deng

The randomization inference literature studying randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assumes that units' potential outcomes are deterministic. This assumption is unlikely to hold, as stochastic shocks may take place during the experiment. In…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-12-15 Antoine Deeb , Clément de Chaisemartin

Experiments used in current continual learning research do not faithfully assess fundamental challenges of learning continually. Instead of assessing performance on challenging and representative experiment designs, recent research has…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-27 Sebastian Farquhar , Yarin Gal

A B testing serves as the gold standard for large scale, data driven decision making in online businesses. To mitigate metric variability and enhance testing sensitivity, control variates and regression adjustment have emerged as prominent…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-10-13 Yu Zhang , Bokui Wan , Yongli Qin

Recent research in causal inference under network interference has explored various experimental designs and estimation techniques to address this issue. However, existing methods, which typically rely on single experiments, often reach a…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-03-10 Qianyi Chen , Bo Li