In this paper we introduce a variant of optimal transport adapted to the causal structure given by an underlying directed graph. Different graph structures lead to different specifications of the optimal transport problem. For instance, a fully connected graph yields standard optimal transport, a linear graph structure corresponds to adapted optimal transport, and an empty graph leads to a notion of optimal transport related to CO-OT, Gromov-Wasserstein distances and factored OT. We derive different characterizations of causal transport plans and introduce Wasserstein distances between causal models that respect the underlying graph structure. We show that average treatment effects are continuous with respect to causal Wasserstein distances and small perturbations of structural causal models lead to small deviations in causal Wasserstein distance. We also introduce an interpolation between causal models based on causal Wasserstein distance and compare it to standard Wasserstein interpolation.
Laplace approximation is a very useful tool in Bayesian inference and it claims a nearly Gaussian behavior of the posterior. \cite{SpLaplace2022} established some rather accurate finite sample results about the quality of Laplace approximation in terms of the so called effective dimension $p$ under the critical dimension constraint $p^{3} \ll n$. However, this condition can be too restrictive for many applications like error-in-operator problem or Deep Neuronal Networks. This paper addresses the question whether the dimensionality condition can be relaxed and the accuracy of approximation can be improved if the target of estimation is low dimensional while the nuisance parameter is high or infinite dimensional. Under mild conditions, the marginal posterior can be approximated by a Gaussian mixture and the accuracy of the approximation only depends on the target dimension. Under the condition $p^{2} \ll n$ or in some special situation like semi-orthogonality, the Gaussian mixture can be replaced by one Gaussian distribution leading to a classical Laplace result. The second result greatly benefits from the recent advances in Gaussian comparison from \cite{GNSUl2017}. The results are illustrated and specified for the case of error-in-operator model.
In machine learning, training data often capture the behaviour of multiple subgroups of some underlying human population. This behaviour can often be modelled as observations of an unknown dynamical system with an unobserved state. When the training data for the subgroups are not controlled carefully, however, under-representation bias arises. To counter under-representation bias, we introduce two natural notions of fairness in time-series forecasting problems: subgroup fairness and instantaneous fairness. These notions extend predictive parity to the learning of dynamical systems. We also show globally convergent methods for the fairness-constrained learning problems using hierarchies of convexifications of non-commutative polynomial optimisation problems. We also show that by exploiting sparsity in the convexifications, we can reduce the run time of our methods considerably. Our empirical results on a biased data set motivated by insurance applications and the well-known COMPAS data set demonstrate the efficacy of our methods.
The proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm stands as one of the most prosperous methods in the field of reinforcement learning (RL). Despite its success, the theoretical understanding of PPO remains deficient. Specifically, it is unclear whether PPO or its optimistic variants can effectively solve linear Markov decision processes (MDPs), which are arguably the simplest models in RL with function approximation. To bridge this gap, we propose an optimistic variant of PPO for episodic adversarial linear MDPs with full-information feedback, and establish a $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(d^{3/4}H^2K^{3/4})$ regret for it. Here $d$ is the ambient dimension of linear MDPs, $H$ is the length of each episode, and $K$ is the number of episodes. Compared with existing policy-based algorithms, we achieve the state-of-the-art regret bound in both stochastic linear MDPs and adversarial linear MDPs with full information. Additionally, our algorithm design features a novel multi-batched updating mechanism and the theoretical analysis utilizes a new covering number argument of value and policy classes, which might be of independent interest.
Traditional hidden Markov models have been a useful tool to understand and model stochastic dynamic data; in the case of non-Gaussian data, models such as mixture of Gaussian hidden Markov models can be used. However, these suffer from the computation of precision matrices and have a lot of unnecessary parameters. As a consequence, such models often perform better when it is assumed that all variables are independent, a hypothesis that may be unrealistic. Hidden Markov models based on kernel density estimation are also capable of modeling non-Gaussian data, but they assume independence between variables. In this article, we introduce a new hidden Markov model based on kernel density estimation, which is capable of capturing kernel dependencies using context-specific Bayesian networks. The proposed model is described, together with a learning algorithm based on the expectation-maximization algorithm. Additionally, the model is compared to related HMMs on synthetic and real data. From the results, the benefits in likelihood and classification accuracy from the proposed model are quantified and analyzed.
We characterise the unbiasedness of the score function, viewed as an inference function for a class of finite mixture models. The models studied represent the situation where there is a stratification of the observations in a finite number of groups. We show that, under mild regularity conditions, the score function for estimating the parameters identifying each group's distribution is unbiased. We also show that if one introduces a mixture in the scenario described above so that for some observations, it is only known that they belong to some of the groups with a probability not in $\{ 0, 1 \}$, then the score function becomes biased. We argue then that under further mild regularity, the maximum likelihood estimate is not consistent. The results above are extended to regular models containing arbitrary nuisance parameters, including semiparametric models.
We devise survey-weighted pseudo posterior distribution estimators under two-stage informative sampling of both primary clusters and secondary nested units for a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) population generating model as a simple canonical case where population model random effects are defined to be coincident with the primary clusters, for example student performance based on a survey of schools and students such as the 2000 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We consider estimation on an observed informative sample under both an augmented pseudo likelihood that co-samples the random effects, as well as an integrated likelihood that marginalizes out the random effects from the survey-weighted augmented pseudo likelihood. This paper includes a theoretical exposition that enumerates easily verified conditions for which estimation under the augmented pseudo posterior is guaranteed to be consistent at the true generating parameters. We reveal in simulation that both approaches produce asymptotically unbiased estimation of the generating hyperparameters for the random effects when a key condition on the sum of within cluster weighted residuals is met. We present a comparison with two frequentist alternatives, an expectation-maximization approach and a composite likelihood method that requires pairwise sampling weights.
We consider a linear model which can have a large number of explanatory variables, the errors with an asymmetric distribution or some values of the explained variable are missing at random. In order to take in account these several situations, we consider the non parametric empirical likelihood (EL) estimation method. Because a constraint in EL contains an indicator function then a smoothed function instead of the indicator will be considered. Two smoothed expectile maximum EL methods are proposed, one of which will automatically select the explanatory variables. For each of the methods we obtain the convergence rate of the estimators and their asymptotic normality. The smoothed expectile empirical log-likelihood ratio process follow asymptotically a chi-square distribution and moreover the adaptive LASSO smoothed expectile maximum EL estimator satisfies the sparsity property which guarantees the automatic selection of zero model coefficients. In order to implement these methods, we propose four algorithms.
Real-world data, such as administrative claims and electronic health records, are increasingly used for safety monitoring and to help guide regulatory decision-making. In these settings, it is important to document analytic decisions transparently and objectively to ensure that analyses meet their intended goals. The Causal Roadmap is an established framework that can guide and document analytic decisions through each step of the analytic pipeline, which will help investigators generate high-quality real-world evidence. In this paper, we illustrate the utility of the Causal Roadmap using two case studies previously led by workgroups sponsored by the Sentinel Initiative -- a program for actively monitoring the safety of regulated medical products. Each case example focuses on different aspects of the analytic pipeline for drug safety monitoring. The first case study shows how the Causal Roadmap encourages transparency, reproducibility, and objective decision-making for causal analyses. The second case study highlights how this framework can guide analytic decisions beyond inference on causal parameters, improving outcome ascertainment in clinical phenotyping. These examples provide a structured framework for implementing the Causal Roadmap in safety surveillance and guide transparent, reproducible, and objective analysis.
Deep learning is usually described as an experiment-driven field under continuous criticizes of lacking theoretical foundations. This problem has been partially fixed by a large volume of literature which has so far not been well organized. This paper reviews and organizes the recent advances in deep learning theory. The literature is categorized in six groups: (1) complexity and capacity-based approaches for analyzing the generalizability of deep learning; (2) stochastic differential equations and their dynamic systems for modelling stochastic gradient descent and its variants, which characterize the optimization and generalization of deep learning, partially inspired by Bayesian inference; (3) the geometrical structures of the loss landscape that drives the trajectories of the dynamic systems; (4) the roles of over-parameterization of deep neural networks from both positive and negative perspectives; (5) theoretical foundations of several special structures in network architectures; and (6) the increasingly intensive concerns in ethics and security and their relationships with generalizability.
This paper focuses on the expected difference in borrower's repayment when there is a change in the lender's credit decisions. Classical estimators overlook the confounding effects and hence the estimation error can be magnificent. As such, we propose another approach to construct the estimators such that the error can be greatly reduced. The proposed estimators are shown to be unbiased, consistent, and robust through a combination of theoretical analysis and numerical testing. Moreover, we compare the power of estimating the causal quantities between the classical estimators and the proposed estimators. The comparison is tested across a wide range of models, including linear regression models, tree-based models, and neural network-based models, under different simulated datasets that exhibit different levels of causality, different degrees of nonlinearity, and different distributional properties. Most importantly, we apply our approaches to a large observational dataset provided by a global technology firm that operates in both the e-commerce and the lending business. We find that the relative reduction of estimation error is strikingly substantial if the causal effects are accounted for correctly.