Causal Learning from Data

Catalog description

This course introduces key concepts and techniques for characterizing, from observational or experimental study data and from background information, the causal effect of a specific treatment, exposure, or intervention (e.g., a medical treatment) upon an outcome of interest (e.g., disease status). The fundamental problem of causal inference is the impossibility of observing the effects of different and incompatible treatments on the same individual or unit. This problem is overcome by estimating an average causal effect over a study population. Making valid causal inferences with observational data is especially challenging, because of the greater potential for biases (confounding bias, selection bias, and measurement bias) that can badly distort causal effect estimates. Consequently, this topic has been the focus of intense cross-disciplinary research in recent years. Causal inference techniques will be illustrated by applications in several fields such as computer science, engineering, medicine, public health, biology, genomics, neuroscience, economics, and social science. Course grading will be based on quizzes, homeworks, a class presentation, and a causal data analysis project. Specific topics: treatments, exposures, and interventions; causal effects and causal effect measures; confounding bias; potential outcomes and counterfactuals; randomized experiments; observational studies; causal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs); exchangeability and conditional exchangeability; effect modification; causal interactions; nonparametric structural equations; Pearl's Back-Door Criterion, Front-Door Criterion, and related results; covariate adjustment; matching on covariates; selection bias; measurement bias; instrumental variables; causal modeling; inverse probability weighting; marginal structural models; standardization; structural nested models; outcome regression; propensity scores; sensitivity analysis. Prereq: CSDS 440 or MATH 380 or STAT 312 or STAT 313 or STAT 332 or STAT 333 or Requisites Not Met permission.