Model-based causal feature selection for general response types

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kook, Lucas, Saengkyongam, Sorawit, Lundborg, Anton Rask, Hothorn, Torsten, Peters, Jonas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909305240813568
author Kook, Lucas
Saengkyongam, Sorawit
Lundborg, Anton Rask
Hothorn, Torsten
Peters, Jonas
author_facet Kook, Lucas
Saengkyongam, Sorawit
Lundborg, Anton Rask
Hothorn, Torsten
Peters, Jonas
contents Discovering causal relationships from observational data is a fundamental yet challenging task. Invariant causal prediction (ICP, Peters et al., 2016) is a method for causal feature selection which requires data from heterogeneous settings and exploits that causal models are invariant. ICP has been extended to general additive noise models and to nonparametric settings using conditional independence tests. However, the latter often suffer from low power (or poor type I error control) and additive noise models are not suitable for applications in which the response is not measured on a continuous scale, but reflects categories or counts. Here, we develop transformation-model (TRAM) based ICP, allowing for continuous, categorical, count-type, and uninformatively censored responses (these model classes, generally, do not allow for identifiability when there is no exogenous heterogeneity). As an invariance test, we propose TRAM-GCM based on the expected conditional covariance between environments and score residuals with uniform asymptotic level guarantees. For the special case of linear shift TRAMs, we also consider TRAM-Wald, which tests invariance based on the Wald statistic. We provide an open-source R package 'tramicp' and evaluate our approach on simulated data and in a case study investigating causal features of survival in critically ill patients.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_12833
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Model-based causal feature selection for general response types
Kook, Lucas
Saengkyongam, Sorawit
Lundborg, Anton Rask
Hothorn, Torsten
Peters, Jonas
Methodology
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
Discovering causal relationships from observational data is a fundamental yet challenging task. Invariant causal prediction (ICP, Peters et al., 2016) is a method for causal feature selection which requires data from heterogeneous settings and exploits that causal models are invariant. ICP has been extended to general additive noise models and to nonparametric settings using conditional independence tests. However, the latter often suffer from low power (or poor type I error control) and additive noise models are not suitable for applications in which the response is not measured on a continuous scale, but reflects categories or counts. Here, we develop transformation-model (TRAM) based ICP, allowing for continuous, categorical, count-type, and uninformatively censored responses (these model classes, generally, do not allow for identifiability when there is no exogenous heterogeneity). As an invariance test, we propose TRAM-GCM based on the expected conditional covariance between environments and score residuals with uniform asymptotic level guarantees. For the special case of linear shift TRAMs, we also consider TRAM-Wald, which tests invariance based on the Wald statistic. We provide an open-source R package 'tramicp' and evaluate our approach on simulated data and in a case study investigating causal features of survival in critically ill patients.
title Model-based causal feature selection for general response types
topic Methodology
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12833