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Substitution modeling under simulated inventory constraints

In the context of retail, substitution is typically defined as "when customers that prefer product A, but when unavailable, purchase product B, instead." Naively, the most of useful ...
jbuddy_13's user avatar
  • 3,520
6 votes
2 answers
168 views

Is it possible to evaluate causal algorithms on real world observational data?

Lot of times I get asked to use causal algorithms (e.g. algorithms estimating intervention results, or in general causal inference algorithms) and to compare them against non-causal prediction ...
DaSim's user avatar
  • 460
1 vote
1 answer
76 views

How to do analysis of correlation from multiple-timepoints measurements?

My case is analyzing the association between the concentration of HIV DNA prior to therapy (time point 0, $t_0$) and the concentrations of biomarkers of HIV infection after therapy, measured in 6 time ...
NW12's user avatar
  • 13
0 votes
0 answers
18 views

Extrapolating/forecasting treatment effects from difference-in-difference model

My goal is to extrapolate or forecast dynamic treatment effects into the future using a fitted model. My data consists of two groups (treated and control), seven time points, and a continuous outcome. ...
CaptainAardvark's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
41 views

R=X*Y is the relationship. Is predicting R and X and obtain Y same as predicting X and Y to obtain R?

Of course the numbers will be different, I mean more in terms of relationship. I know that X affect R and Y affects R . X and Y are independent but since R is a product of X and Y , I dont think that ...
MSKO's user avatar
  • 71
6 votes
1 answer
315 views

Causal implications from a model with poor predictive capabilities

I am currently reading McElreath's Statistical Rethinking book. I'm still in Chapter 5 though. I am unsure if this will be addressed later on but I can't help but wonder: Earlier in the book, he ...
user1237300's user avatar
10 votes
7 answers
929 views

Bias-Variance tradeoff in prediction versus causal inference

In prediction, accepting a little more bias in exchange for a lot less variance is the very name of the game - we'll chose the model with minimal test MSE without regard for its composition (bias ...
ColorStatistics's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
38 views

Using predicted outcomes to adress selection bias in causal inference

Can I use predicted outcomes from one model as the dependent variable in another model to make causal claims? Put differently, is there something equivalent to the Frish-Waugh-Lovell theorem for ...
Nils Gudat's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
194 views

Difference between Predictive Inference and Causal Inference

I am looking for functional mathematical notation to explain the difference between Predictive Inference and Causal Inference? I list an example model. I also list links further down that give ...
L92MD14's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
178 views

Should predictive analysis be tackled with causal inference in mind?

Say I am trying to predict depression from anxiety. I collect data and build a MLE and obtain r=0.9. To me, this is great, so I push the model to production. 4 months later, I realise that the "...
Anon's user avatar
  • 33
4 votes
1 answer
38 views

When is the knowledge of the causal mechanism useful for pure prediction?

In many settings, we are only interested in building a good predictor: e.g. $E(y_t | x_{t-1})$, where $y_t$ and $x_{t-1}$ are vectors of arbitrary dimension. However, sometimes we are also given, or ...
J Li's user avatar
  • 348
2 votes
0 answers
173 views

Confusion on Ablation test (Ablation Experiment or Ablation study)

I followed the steps of the ablation test to calculate the feature importance one by one. In Table 1, row 1 presents the model prediction performance of using full features. Regarding rows 2-4, these ...
Joono's user avatar
  • 21
18 votes
2 answers
1k views

How would econometricians answer the objections and recommendations raised by Chen and Pearl (2013)?

In their article, Chen and Pearl (2013), critically examined 6 econometric textbooks, among these the textbooks written by Wooldridge (2009) {the introductory book}, and Stock & Watson (2011). ...
ColorStatistics's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
1k views

Regression: Causation vs Prediction vs Description

In my experience it seems me that the interpretation about regression, its meaning and its scope, are debatable and great confusion exist about those things. It seems me that confusions are not go ...
markowitz's user avatar
  • 5,779
1 vote
0 answers
54 views

build and evaluate prediction model with the same data

I have a dataset with a sample size of n=30, one dependent variable and 31 possible predictors. Now I want to build a regression model as part of a regression kriging model to predict my dependent ...
A. W.'s user avatar
  • 41
1 vote
0 answers
32 views

Are boosted machine learning methods robust against low probable feature combinations when predicting?

I would like to use machine learning methods in the potential outcome framework, that is, simulating outcome for all observations under different values of a specific predictor, while keeping all ...
Bakaburg's user avatar
  • 2,939
4 votes
2 answers
724 views

Including Collider Variables in Prediction

When the goal is to estimate a causal association between X and Y in the regression framework, one should not condition on (include as covariates) collider variables (common causes of both X and Y) ...
Noah Hammarlund's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
807 views

How to determine the most important variables when there are differences in variable importance between predictive models [closed]

Background: I am running predictive models to see which variables have the most influence over a chosen measurement. In this example I am comparing the models gbm ...
J.Con's user avatar
  • 207
2 votes
1 answer
152 views

Are predictions obtained with spuriously correlated predictors any useful?

Short version: How useful are predictions of a variable y that are obtained using theoretically unrelated variables X that happen by mere luck to predict y very well? Is there any paper out there ...
Juan Martínez's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
54 views

Determine treatment effect based on conditional factors

Say I have an experiment running where I give treatment to a random selection of people, and I know that the target variable is affected by a number of factors. I know most of the factors that affect ...
Peter Smit's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
2k views

T-consistency vs. P-consistency

Francis Diebold has a blog post "Causality and T-Consistency vs. Correlation and P-Consistency" where he presents the notion of P-consistency, or presistency: Consider a standard linear regression ...
Richard Hardy's user avatar
70 votes
10 answers
66k views

What is the difference between prediction and inference?

I'm reading through "An Introduction to Statistical Learning" . In chapter 2, they discuss the reason for estimating a function $f$. 2.1.1 Why Estimate $f$? There are two main reasons we ...
user1592380's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
2k views

Evaluating results of VAR (Vector Autoregression) using R

I am trying to evaluate the results of a prediction obtained with the R function VAR. I have reproduced an example with two time series so that others can also implement it (the data set is read from ...
ruthy_gg's user avatar
  • 221
4 votes
3 answers
12k views

What is the difference between correlation, causation and prediction?

Suppose we have a set of events $\Omega$, containing events $A$ and $B$. My econometrics professor tried to distinguish the following three terms today. Causation --- $A$ causes $B$ if the ...
Stan Shunpike's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
219 views

Binary logistic regression - SPSS

I did some regression analysis in SPSS using two binary variables: Biomarker X (0= low levels; 1= high levels), where 0 was the reference category and Obesity (0=no; 1=yes) ''Biomarker X'' was taken ...
user86880's user avatar
32 votes
9 answers
8k views

When can correlation be useful without causation?

A pet saying of many statisticians is "Correlation doesn't imply causation." This is certainly true, but one thing that DOES seem implied here is that correlation has little or no value. Is this ...
Indigenuity's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
849 views

How fair is it to use the word "predict" for (logistic) regression?

My understanding is that even regression does not give causality. It can only give association between y variable and x variables and possibly a direction. Am I correct? I've often found phrases ...
rk567's user avatar
  • 711
1 vote
0 answers
126 views

Do you need causal models when doing counterfactual predictions?

I am modeling the impact the number of a certain type of company (bottom of pyramid (BOP) companies, ie. companies that cater to the poorest consumers) have on market price. I considered the ...
user54360's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
299 views

Counterfactuals for Variables with Negative Values

Lets imagine I have estimated the following simple linear regression model: $y_{i} = 10 + 0.5x_{i} + \varepsilon_{i} $, and want to work out the counter-factual, or what would $ y_{i}$ be in the ...
EddieMcGoldrick's user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
15k views

What is the relation between causal inference and prediction?

What are the relationships and the differences between causal inference and prediction (both classification and regression)? In the prediction context, we have the predictor/input variables and ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 19.8k
3 votes
0 answers
820 views

Implication / Interpretation of long term equilibrium VECM

I want to test the influence of exchange rates on a price index and struggle with the interpretations. My variables are I(1) First, I ran an OLS on first differenced variables which indicated a ...
gobbble's user avatar
  • 31