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arXiv 2103.07066econ.EMcs.LGstat.MEstat.ML
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寻找具有显著处理效应的子组

Finding Subgroups with Significant Treatment Effects

Stanford University(斯坦福大学);University of Oxford(牛津大学)

Jann Spiess, Vasilis Syrgkanis, Victor Yaneng Wang

AI总结:

针对随机对照试验中总体效应不显著的问题,提出一种以最大化显著正向效应概率为目标的机器学习方法,利用决策树高效寻找显著子组,较传统方法具有更高检验功效。

摘要:

研究人员经常开展资源密集型的随机对照试验(RCT),以估计干预措施对感兴趣结果变量的因果效应。然而,这些结果变量往往带有噪声,估计出的总体效应可能较小或不精确。尽管如此,我们仍可能通过寻找具有显著效应的子组来提供干预措施有效性的可靠证据。在本文中,我们提出了一种机器学习方法,该方法专门针对在噪声数据中寻找此类子组进行了优化。与现有的用于个性化处理分配的方法不同,我们的工具从根本上设计为考虑显著性检验:它生成一个子组,该子组的选择旨在最大化获得统计上显著的正向处理效应的概率。我们提供了一种使用决策树的计算高效实现,并展示了其相对于基于(估计的)正向处理效应选择子组的优势。与标准的基于树的回归和分类工具相比,这种方法在检测受处理影响的子组方面往往能产生更高的统计功效。

英文摘要:

Researchers often run resource-intensive randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to estimate the causal effects of interventions on outcomes of interest. Yet these outcomes are often noisy, and estimated overall effects can be small or imprecise. Nevertheless, we may still be able to produce reliable evidence of the efficacy of an intervention by finding subgroups with significant effects. In this paper, we propose a machine-learning method that is specifically optimized for finding such subgroups in noisy data. Unlike available methods for personalized treatment assignment, our tool is fundamentally designed to take significance testing into account: it produces a subgroup that is chosen to maximize the probability of obtaining a statistically significant positive treatment effect. We provide a computationally efficient implementation using decision trees and demonstrate its gain over selecting subgroups based on positive (estimated) treatment effects. Compared to standard tree-based regression and classification tools, this approach tends to yield higher power in detecting subgroups affected by the treatment.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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