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Related papers: Conservative Inference for Counterfactuals

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Machine learning models that operate on graph-structured data, such as molecular graphs or social networks, often make accurate predictions but offer little insight into why certain predictions are made. Counterfactual explanations address…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-21 David Bechtoldt , Sidney Bender

Inferring causal effects of continuous-valued treatments from observational data is a crucial task promising to better inform policy- and decision-makers. A critical assumption needed to identify these effects is that all confounding…

Causal discovery, the problem of inferring the direction of causality, is generally ill-posed. We use the language of structural causal models (SCM) to show that assuming that the causal relations are acyclic and invariant across multiple…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-14 Francesco Montagna , Francesco Locatello

We consider counterfactual explanations, the problem of minimally adjusting features in a source input instance so that it is classified as a target class under a given classifier. This has become a topic of recent interest as a way to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Miguel Á. Carreira-Perpiñán , Suryabhan Singh Hada

Important questions for impact evaluation require knowledge not only of average effects, but of the distribution of treatment effects. The inability to observe individual counterfactuals makes answering these empirical questions…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-05-25 Bruno Fava

With the widespread accumulation of observational data, researchers obtain a new direction to learn counterfactual effects in many domains (e.g., health care and computational advertising) without Randomized Controlled Trials(RCTs).…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-01 Guanglin Zhou , Lina Yao , Xiwei Xu , Chen Wang , Liming Zhu

Observational studies are rising in importance due to the widespread accumulation of data in fields such as healthcare, education, employment and ecology. We consider the task of answering counterfactual questions such as, "Would this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-06-07 Fredrik D. Johansson , Uri Shalit , David Sontag

Counterfactual inference considers a hypothetical intervention in a parallel world that shares some evidence with the factual world. If the evidence specifies a conditional distribution on a manifold, counterfactuals may be analytically…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-07-03 Juha Karvanen , Santtu Tikka , Matti Vihola

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-03-04 Rajesh Ranganath , Adler Perotte

Recent work has discussed the limitations of counterfactual explanations to recommend actions for algorithmic recourse, and argued for the need of taking causal relationships between features into consideration. Unfortunately, in practice,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-26 Amir-Hossein Karimi , Julius von Kügelgen , Bernhard Schölkopf , Isabel Valera

Identifying covariates that modify treatment effects is a central problem in causal inference. Yet existing data-adaptive procedures do not provide finite-sample control over the expected number of false discoveries, risking spurious…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-12 Falco J. Bargagli-Stoffi , Omar Melikechi

Coupling probability measures lies at the core of many problems in statistics and machine learning, from domain adaptation to transfer learning and causal inference. Yet, even when restricted to deterministic transports, such couplings are…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-09-22 Lucas De Lara , Luca Ganassali

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-18 Jake Fawkes , Robin J. Evans

The internal validity of observational study is often subject to debate. In this study, we define the counterfactuals as the unobserved sample and intend to quantify its relationship with the null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST). We…

Applications · Statistics 2019-06-21 Tenglong Li , Kenneth A. Frank

The proximal causal inference framework enables the identification and estimation of causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding by leveraging two disjoint sets of observed strong proxies: negative control treatments and…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-16 Antonio Olivas-Martinez , Peter B. Gilbert , Andrea Rotnitzky

Counterfactual explanations indicate the smallest change in input that can translate to a different outcome for a machine learning model. Counterfactuals have generated immense interest in high-stakes applications such as finance,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-12 Erfaun Noorani , Pasan Dissanayake , Faisal Hamman , Sanghamitra Dutta

Estimating counterfactual distributions under interventions is central to treatment risk assessment and counterfactual generation tasks. Existing approaches model the counterfactual distribution as a standalone generative target, without…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-11 Hugh Dance , Johnny Xi , Peter Orbanz , Benjamin Bloem-Reddy

Causal inference from observational data provides strong evidence for the best action in decision-making without performing expensive randomized trials. The effect of an action is usually not identifiable under unobserved confounding, even…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Md Musfiqur Rahman , Ziwei Jiang , Hilaf Hasson , Murat Kocaoglu

An analysis using classical stochastic processes is used to construct a consistent system of quantum counterfactual reasoning. When applied to a counterfactual version of Hardy's paradox, it shows that the probabilistic character of quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-10-31 Robert B. Griffiths

Consider sensitivity analysis to assess the worst-case possible values of counterfactual outcome means and average treatment effects under sequential unmeasured confounding in a longitudinal study with time-varying treatments and…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-08-31 Zhiqiang Tan