- Main
Unit Selection Based on Counterfactual Logic
- Li, Ang
- Advisor(s): Pearl, Judea
Abstract
The unit selection problem aims to identify a set of individuals who are most likely to exhibit a desired mode of behavior, which is defined in counterfactual terms. A typical example is that of selecting individuals who would respond one way if encouraged and a different way if not encouraged. Unlike previous works on this problem, which rely on ad-hoc heuristics, we approach this problem formally, using counterfactual logic, to properly capture the nature of the desired behavior. This formalism enables us to derive an informative selection criterion which integrates experimental and observational data. We show that a more accurate selection criterion can be achieved when structural information is available in the form of a causal diagram. We further discuss data availability issue regarding the derivation of the selection criterion without the observational or experimental data. We demonstrate the superiority of this criterion over A/B-test-based approaches.
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