arXiv Machine Learning By Manuel Pfeuffer, Roshan Prakash Rane, Kerstin Ritter, Sonja Greven

Controlling for Omitted Variable Bias in Deep Neural Networks

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The paper introduces a control‑variable framework for deep neural networks to mitigate omitted variable bias, particularly shortcut learning where covariates like demographics influence predictions. It refits the final layer of a pre‑trained network using cross‑fitting with ridge penalisation, orthogonalises covariate effects, and marginalises predictions over covariate distributions to achieve unbiased, interpretable results. Experiments on simulated images and neuroimaging data show consistent estimation of true effects and performance close to models trained on unconfounded data.

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arXiv AI
Oct 15

Constraint-Aware Influence Estimation in Deep Constrained Learning

The paper introduces the Directional Influence Function (DIF), a new estimator for measuring how training samples affect the solution of constrained learning problems. DIF incorporates constraints directly by formulating optimality conditions as a variational inequality, thereby avoiding the bias seen in classical influence functions. Experiments on constrained linear regression and fairness‑constrained CNNs show that DIF accurately predicts changes in test loss and aligns closely with actual retraining results.

By Xin Wang (Jeff), R. Tyrrell Rockafellar (Jeff), Xuegang (Jeff), Ban
arXiv Machine Learning
5d ago

A Causal Bootstrap for Diverse Image Generation under Unobserved Confounding

The paper introduces CauVaDE, a causal generative model that represents an unobserved confounder as a discrete latent cluster, enabling accurate approximation of both observational and interventional image distributions. It demonstrates that this representation can capture diverse causal explanations without sacrificing fit to the data. A novel causal bootstrap method is proposed to vary confounder entropy, producing a family of distinct interventional image distributions.

By Jingyuan Chen, Kangrui Ruan, Junzhe Zhang