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Transfer Learning for Individual Treatment Effect Estimation

Publication ,  Conference
Aloui, A; Dong, J; Le, CP; Tarokh, V
Published in: Proceedings of Machine Learning Research
January 1, 2023

This work considers the problem of transferring causal knowledge between tasks for Individual Treatment Effect (ITE) estimation. To this end, we theoretically assess the feasibility of transferring ITE knowledge and present a practical framework for efficient transfer. A lower bound is introduced on the ITE error of the target task to demonstrate that ITE knowledge transfer is challenging due to the absence of counterfactual information. Nevertheless, we establish generalization upper bounds on the counterfactual loss and ITE error of the target task, demonstrating the feasibility of ITE knowledge transfer. Subsequently, we introduce a framework with a new Causal Inference Task Affinity (CITA) measure for ITE knowledge transfer. Specifically, we use CITA to find the closest source task to the target task and utilize it for ITE knowledge transfer. Empirical studies are provided, demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed method. We observe that ITE knowledge transfer can significantly (up to 95%) reduce the amount of data required for ITE estimation.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Proceedings of Machine Learning Research

EISSN

2640-3498

Publication Date

January 1, 2023

Volume

216

Start / End Page

56 / 66
 

Citation

APA
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MLA
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Aloui, A., Dong, J., Le, C. P., & Tarokh, V. (2023). Transfer Learning for Individual Treatment Effect Estimation. In Proceedings of Machine Learning Research (Vol. 216, pp. 56–66).
Aloui, A., J. Dong, C. P. Le, and V. Tarokh. “Transfer Learning for Individual Treatment Effect Estimation.” In Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 216:56–66, 2023.
Aloui A, Dong J, Le CP, Tarokh V. Transfer Learning for Individual Treatment Effect Estimation. In: Proceedings of Machine Learning Research. 2023. p. 56–66.
Aloui, A., et al. “Transfer Learning for Individual Treatment Effect Estimation.” Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, vol. 216, 2023, pp. 56–66.
Aloui A, Dong J, Le CP, Tarokh V. Transfer Learning for Individual Treatment Effect Estimation. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research. 2023. p. 56–66.

Published In

Proceedings of Machine Learning Research

EISSN

2640-3498

Publication Date

January 1, 2023

Volume

216

Start / End Page

56 / 66