Bayesian Invariance Modeling of Multi-Environment Data

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Wu, Luhuan, Yin, Mingzhang, Wang, Yixin, Cunningham, John P., Blei, David M.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866908441536102400
author Wu, Luhuan
Yin, Mingzhang
Wang, Yixin
Cunningham, John P.
Blei, David M.
author_facet Wu, Luhuan
Yin, Mingzhang
Wang, Yixin
Cunningham, John P.
Blei, David M.
contents Invariant prediction [Peters et al., 2016] analyzes feature/outcome data from multiple environments to identify invariant features - those with a stable predictive relationship to the outcome. Such features support generalization to new environments and help reveal causal mechanisms. Previous methods have primarily tackled this problem through hypothesis testing or regularized optimization. Here we develop Bayesian Invariant Prediction (BIP), a probabilistic model for invariant prediction. BIP encodes the indices of invariant features as a latent variable and recover them by posterior inference. Under the assumptions of Peters et al. [2016], the BIP posterior targets the true invariant features. We prove that the posterior is consistent and that greater environment heterogeneity leads to faster posterior contraction. To handle many features, we design an efficient variational approximation called VI-BIP. In simulations and real data, we find that BIP and VI-BIP are more accurate and scalable than existing methods for invariant prediction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_22675
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bayesian Invariance Modeling of Multi-Environment Data
Wu, Luhuan
Yin, Mingzhang
Wang, Yixin
Cunningham, John P.
Blei, David M.
Machine Learning
Invariant prediction [Peters et al., 2016] analyzes feature/outcome data from multiple environments to identify invariant features - those with a stable predictive relationship to the outcome. Such features support generalization to new environments and help reveal causal mechanisms. Previous methods have primarily tackled this problem through hypothesis testing or regularized optimization. Here we develop Bayesian Invariant Prediction (BIP), a probabilistic model for invariant prediction. BIP encodes the indices of invariant features as a latent variable and recover them by posterior inference. Under the assumptions of Peters et al. [2016], the BIP posterior targets the true invariant features. We prove that the posterior is consistent and that greater environment heterogeneity leads to faster posterior contraction. To handle many features, we design an efficient variational approximation called VI-BIP. In simulations and real data, we find that BIP and VI-BIP are more accurate and scalable than existing methods for invariant prediction.
title Bayesian Invariance Modeling of Multi-Environment Data
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22675