English
Related papers

Related papers: Causal Inference in Social Platforms Under Approxi…

200 papers

Interference bias is a major impediment to identifying causal effects in real-world settings. For example, vaccination reduces the transmission of a virus in a population such that everyone benefits -- even those who are not treated. This…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-03-25 Michael O'Riordan , Ciarán M. Gilligan-Lee

We propose a matching method that recovers direct treatment effects from randomized experiments where units are connected in an observed network, and units that share edges can potentially influence each others' outcomes. Traditional…

Causal effect estimation under networked interference is an important but challenging problem. Available parametric methods are limited in their model space, while previous semiparametric methods, e.g., leveraging neural networks to fit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-27 Weilin Chen , Ruichu Cai , Zeqin Yang , Jie Qiao , Yuguang Yan , Zijian Li , Zhifeng Hao

In many experimental and observational studies, the outcome of interest is often difficult or expensive to observe, reducing effective sample sizes for estimating average treatment effects (ATEs) even when identifiable. We study how…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-11 Nathan Kallus , Xiaojie Mao

A key bottleneck in quantum machine learning is the computational cost of repeated quantum circuit evaluations during the inference phase. To address this, we present a framework for constructing fast, cheap, provably accurate classical…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-29 Sreeraj Rajindran Nair , Christopher Ferrie

Randomized experiments on social networks pose statistical challenges, due to the possibility of interference between units. We propose new methods for estimating attributable treatment effects in such settings. The methods do not require…

Methodology · Statistics 2015-10-13 David S. Choi

Randomized experiments have become a standard tool in economics. In analyzing randomized experiments, the traditional approach has been based on the Stable Unit Treatment Value (SUTVA: \cite{rubin}) assumption which dictates that there is…

Econometrics · Economics 2020-12-29 Bora Kim

We describe our framework, deployed at Facebook, that accounts for interference between experimental units through cluster-randomized experiments. We document this system, including the design and estimation procedures, and detail insights…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2020-12-17 Brian Karrer , Liang Shi , Monica Bhole , Matt Goldman , Tyrone Palmer , Charlie Gelman , Mikael Konutgan , Feng Sun

This paper develops new methods for causal inference in observational studies on a single large network of interconnected units, addressing two key challenges: long-range dependence among units and the presence of general interference. We…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-11-24 Jizhou Liu , Dake Zhang , Eric J. Tchetgen Tchetgen

Interference is ubiquitous when conducting causal experiments over networks. Except for certain network structures, causal inference on the network in the presence of interference is difficult due to the entanglement between the treatment…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-12-08 Chencheng Cai , Xu Zhang , Edoardo M. Airoldi

We derive new variance formulas for inference on a general class of estimands of causal average treatment effects in a Randomized Control Trial (RCT). We generalize Robins (1988) and show that when the estimand of interest is the Sample…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2017-10-19 Jasjeet S. Sekhon , Yotam Shem-Tov

Spatial interference (SI) occurs when the treatment at one location affects the outcomes at other locations. Accounting for spatial interference in spatiotemporal settings poses further challenges as interference violates the stable unit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-02 Sahara Ali , Omar Faruque , Jianwu Wang

Interference--in which a unit's outcome is affected by the treatment of other units--poses significant challenges for the identification and estimation of causal effects. Most existing methods for estimating interference effects assume that…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-10-14 Yuhua Zhang , Jukka-Pekka Onnela , Shuo Sun , Ruoyu Wang

Randomized experiments in which the treatment of a unit can affect the outcomes of other units are becoming increasingly common in healthcare, economics, and in the social and information sciences. From a causal inference perspective, the…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-02-14 Daniel L. Sussman , Edoardo M. Airoldi

Online platforms regularly conduct randomized experiments to understand how changes to the platform causally affect various outcomes of interest. However, experimentation on online platforms has been criticized for having, among other…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-12 Smitha Milli , Luca Belli , Moritz Hardt

Recently, many estimators for network treatment effects have been proposed. But, their optimality properties in terms of semiparametric efficiency have yet to be resolved. We present a simple, yet flexible asymptotic framework to derive the…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-11-29 Chan Park , Hyunseung Kang

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…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2019-02-20 Craig Tutterow , Guillaume Saint-Jacques

Adaptive experimentation under unknown network interference requires solving two coupled problems: (i) learning the underlying dynamics of interference among units and (ii) using these dynamics to inform treatment allocation in order to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-13 Aidan Gleich , Eric Laber , Alexander Volfovsky

Study populations are typically sampled from limited points in space and time, and marginalized groups are underrepresented. To assess the external validity of randomized and observational studies, we propose and evaluate the worst-case…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-02-04 Sookyo Jeong , Hongseok Namkoong

Evaluating causal effects in the presence of interference is challenging in network-based studies of hard-to-reach populations. Like many such populations, people who inject drugs (PWID) are embedded in social networks and often exert…