Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Nannapaneni, Saideep, Sakaya, Joseph, Caron, Kyle, Albuquerque, Pedro HM, Tashman, Zaid
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15909
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866912496234790912
author Nannapaneni, Saideep
Sakaya, Joseph
Caron, Kyle
Albuquerque, Pedro HM
Tashman, Zaid
author_facet Nannapaneni, Saideep
Sakaya, Joseph
Caron, Kyle
Albuquerque, Pedro HM
Tashman, Zaid
contents Robust decision making involves making decisions in the presence of uncertainty and is often used in critical domains such as healthcare, supply chains, and finance. Causality plays a crucial role in decision-making as it predicts the change in an outcome (usually a key performance indicator) due to a treatment (also called an intervention). To facilitate robust decision making using causality, this paper proposes three Bayesian approaches of the popular Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation (TMLE) algorithm, a flexible semi-parametric double robust estimator, for a probabilistic quantification of uncertainty in causal effects with binary treatment, and binary and continuous outcomes. In the first two approaches, the three TMLE models (outcome, treatment, and fluctuation) are trained sequentially. Since Bayesian implementation of treatment and outcome yields probabilistic predictions, the first approach uses mean predictions, while the second approach uses both the mean and standard deviation of predictions for training the fluctuation model (targeting step). The third approach trains all three models simultaneously through a Bayesian network (called BN-TMLE in this paper). The proposed approaches were demonstrated for two examples with binary and continuous outcomes and validated against classical implementations. This paper also investigated the effect of data sizes and model misspecifications on causal effect estimation using the BN-TMLE approach. Results showed that the proposed BN-TMLE outperformed classical implementations in small data regimes and performed similarly in large data regimes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_15909
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bayesian implementation of Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation for uncertainty quantification in causal effect estimation
Nannapaneni, Saideep
Sakaya, Joseph
Caron, Kyle
Albuquerque, Pedro HM
Tashman, Zaid
Methodology
Machine Learning
Robust decision making involves making decisions in the presence of uncertainty and is often used in critical domains such as healthcare, supply chains, and finance. Causality plays a crucial role in decision-making as it predicts the change in an outcome (usually a key performance indicator) due to a treatment (also called an intervention). To facilitate robust decision making using causality, this paper proposes three Bayesian approaches of the popular Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation (TMLE) algorithm, a flexible semi-parametric double robust estimator, for a probabilistic quantification of uncertainty in causal effects with binary treatment, and binary and continuous outcomes. In the first two approaches, the three TMLE models (outcome, treatment, and fluctuation) are trained sequentially. Since Bayesian implementation of treatment and outcome yields probabilistic predictions, the first approach uses mean predictions, while the second approach uses both the mean and standard deviation of predictions for training the fluctuation model (targeting step). The third approach trains all three models simultaneously through a Bayesian network (called BN-TMLE in this paper). The proposed approaches were demonstrated for two examples with binary and continuous outcomes and validated against classical implementations. This paper also investigated the effect of data sizes and model misspecifications on causal effect estimation using the BN-TMLE approach. Results showed that the proposed BN-TMLE outperformed classical implementations in small data regimes and performed similarly in large data regimes.
title Bayesian implementation of Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation for uncertainty quantification in causal effect estimation
topic Methodology
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15909