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Off-policy evaluation in reinforcement learning offers the chance of using observational data to improve future outcomes in domains such as healthcare and education, but safe deployment in high stakes settings requires ways of assessing its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-12 Omer Gottesman , Joseph Futoma , Yao Liu , Sonali Parbhoo , Leo Anthony Celi , Emma Brunskill , Finale Doshi-Velez

The paper discusses inference techniques for semiparametric models based on suitable versions of inference functions. The text contains two parts. In the first part, we review the optimality theory for non-parametric models based on the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-11-17 Rodrigo Labouriau

Machine learning is pervasive. It powers recommender systems such as Spotify, Instagram and YouTube, and health-care systems via models that predict sleep patterns, or the risk of disease. Individuals contribute data to these models and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-22 Mukund Sundararajan , Walid Krichene

Traditional data influence estimation methods, like influence function, assume that learning algorithms are permutation-invariant with respect to training data. However, modern training paradigms, especially for foundation models using…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-13 Jiachen T. Wang , Dawn Song , James Zou , Prateek Mittal , Ruoxi Jia

How can we attribute the behaviors of machine learning models to their training data? While the classic influence function sheds light on the impact of individual samples, it often fails to capture the more complex and pronounced collective…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-10 Yuzheng Hu , Pingbang Hu , Han Zhao , Jiaqi W. Ma

Inferring intent from observed behavior has been studied extensively within the frameworks of Bayesian inverse planning and inverse reinforcement learning. These methods infer a goal or reward function that best explains the actions of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-08 Siddharth Reddy , Anca D. Dragan , Sergey Levine

This paper considers inference on fixed effects in a linear regression model estimated from network data. An important special case of our setup is the two-way regression model. This is a workhorse technique in the analysis of matched data…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-04-02 Koen Jochmans , Martin Weidner

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL), which infers reward functions from demonstrations, is a valuable tool for modeling and understanding decision-making behavior. Many variants of IRL have been developed to capture complexities of human…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Leo Benac , Abhishek Sharma , Alihan Huyuk , Finale Doshi-Velez

Multi-stage training and knowledge transfer, from a large-scale pretraining task to various finetuning tasks, have revolutionized natural language processing and computer vision resulting in state-of-the-art performance improvements. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-20 Hongge Chen , Si Si , Yang Li , Ciprian Chelba , Sanjiv Kumar , Duane Boning , Cho-Jui Hsieh

Measuring treatment effects in observational studies is challenging because of confounding bias. Confounding occurs when a variable affects both the treatment and the outcome. Traditional methods such as propensity score matching estimate…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-12-23 Bevan I. Smith , Charles Chimedza

Addressing data integrity challenges, such as unlearning the effects of data poisoning after model training, is necessary for the reliable deployment of machine learning models. State-of-the-art influence functions, such as EK-FAC and TRAK,…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Wenjie Li , Jiawei Li , Pengcheng Zeng , Christian Schroeder de Witt , Ameya Prabhu , Amartya Sanyal

Influence functions provide a principled method to assess the contribution of individual training samples to a specific target. Yet, their high computational costs limit their applications on large-scale models and datasets. Existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-27 Xinyu Zhou , Simin Fan , Martin Jaggi

Data attribution seeks to trace model behavior back to the training examples that shaped it, enabling debugging, auditing, and data valuation at scale. Classical influence-function methods offer a principled foundation but remain…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Sibo Ma , Julian Nyarko

Model selection requires repeatedly evaluating models on a given dataset and measuring their relative performances. In modern applications of machine learning, the models being considered are increasingly more expensive to evaluate and the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-21 Anant Raj , Cameron Musco , Lester Mackey , Nicolo Fusi

Interpreting the inference-time behavior of deep neural networks remains a challenging problem. Existing approaches to counterfactual explanation typically ask: What is the closest alternative input that would alter the model's prediction…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Brian Hyeongseok Kim , Jacqueline L. Mitchell , Chao Wang

Treatment effect estimation is essential for informed decision-making in many fields such as healthcare, economics, and public policy. While flexible machine learning models have been widely applied for estimating heterogeneous treatment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-29 Pascal Memmesheimer , Vincent Heuveline , Jürgen Hesser

Despite the risk of misspecification they are tied to, parametric models continue to be used in statistical practice because they are accessible to all. In particular, efficient estimation procedures in parametric models are simple to…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2016-09-01 Marco Carone , Alexander R. Luedtke , Mark J. van der Laan

Use of machine learning to estimate nuisance functions (e.g. outcomes models, propensity score models) in estimators used in causal inference is increasingly common, as it can mitigate bias due to model misspecification. However, it can be…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-17 Rachael K. Ross , Lina M. Montoya , Dana E. Goin , Ivan Diaz , Audrey Renson

This note uses a conformal prediction procedure to provide further support on several points discussed by Professor Efron (Efron, 2020) concerning prediction, estimation and IID assumption. It aims to convey the following messages: (1)…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-03-23 Min-ge Xie , Zheshi Zheng

Distribution inference, sometimes called property inference, infers statistical properties about a training set from access to a model trained on that data. Distribution inference attacks can pose serious risks when models are trained on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-06 Anshuman Suri , David Evans