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Probabilistic programming is a rapidly developing programming paradigm which enables the formulation of Bayesian models as programs and the automation of posterior inference. It facilitates the development of models and conducting Bayesian…
Many online platforms predominantly rank items by predicted user engagement. We believe that there is much unrealized potential in including non-engagement signals, which can improve outcomes both for platforms and for society as a whole.…
The declining response rates in probability surveys along with the widespread availability of unstructured data has led to growing research into non-probability samples. Existing robust approaches are not well-developed for non-Gaussian…
Randomized experiments, or A/B tests are used to estimate the causal impact of a feature on the behavior of users by creating two parallel universes in which members are simultaneously assigned to treatment and control. However, in social…
Predicting user affinity to items is an important problem in applications like content optimization, computational advertising, and many more. While bilinear random effect models (matrix factorization) provide state-of-the-art performance…
This thesis contributes a structured inquiry into the open actuarial mathematics problem of modelling user behaviour using machine learning methods, in order to predict purchase intent of non-life insurance products. It is valuable for a…
We propose a framework for Bayesian non-parametric estimation of the rate at which new infections occur assuming that the epidemic is partially observed. The developed methodology relies on modelling the rate at which new infections occur…
Additive-interactive regression has recently been shown to offer attractive minimax error rates over traditional nonparametric multivariate regression in a wide variety of settings, including cases where the predictor count is much larger…
A/B testing, also known as controlled experiment, bucket testing or splitting testing, has been widely used for evaluating a new feature, service or product in the data-driven decision processes of online websites. The goal of A/B testing…
Online experiments such as Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) or A/B-tests are the bread and butter of modern platforms on the web. They are conducted continuously to allow platforms to estimate the causal effect of replacing system…
A/B testing is a standard method for validating design decisions, yet its reliance on real user traffic limits iteration speed and makes certain experiments impractical. We present SimAB, a system that reframes A/B testing as a fast,…
Online field experiments are the gold-standard way of evaluating changes to real-world interactive machine learning systems. Yet our ability to explore complex, multi-dimensional policy spaces - such as those found in recommendation and…
Prospective display advertising poses a great challenge for large advertising platforms as the strongest predictive signals of users are not eligible to be used in the conversion prediction systems. To that end efforts are made to collect…
A/B experiments are commonly used in research to compare the effects of changing one or more variables in two different experimental groups - a control group and a treatment group. While the benefits of using A/B experiments are widely…
Randomized controlled trials play an important role in how Internet companies predict the impact of policy decisions and product changes. In these `digital experiments', different units (people, devices, products) respond differently to the…
Network data are increasingly collected along with other variables of interest. Our motivation is drawn from neurophysiology studies measuring brain connectivity networks for a sample of individuals along with their membership to a low or…
Online experiments (A/B tests) are widely regarded as the gold standard for evaluating recommender system variants and guiding launch decisions. However, a variety of biases can distort the results of the experiment and mislead…
Current approaches to A/B testing in networks focus on limiting interference, the concern that treatment effects can "spill over" from treatment nodes to control nodes and lead to biased causal effect estimation. Prominent methods for…
Optimal designs minimize the number of experimental runs (samples) needed to accurately estimate model parameters, resulting in algorithms that, for instance, efficiently minimize parameter estimate variance. Governed by knowledge of past…
Two-sided marketplace platforms often run experiments to test the effect of an intervention before launching it platform-wide. A typical approach is to randomize individuals into the treatment group, which receives the intervention, and the…