Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

documentation updates #728

Merged
merged 3 commits into from
Dec 15, 2023
Merged
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
8 changes: 1 addition & 7 deletions docs/about.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -53,15 +53,9 @@ In essence, while traditional machine learning can tell us “what is”, causal
Measuring Causal Effects
------------------------

Different causal effects can be measured using varying techniques.

**Randomized Control Trials (RCT)** are the gold standard for causal effect measurements. Subjects are randomly exposed to a treatment and the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) is measured as the difference between the mean effects in the treatment and control groups. Random assignment removes the effect of any confounders on the treatment.

**Instrumental Variables (IV)** is a technique in which subjects are randomly exposed to a variable that influences treatment, but has no direct effect on the outcome.

An example of an instrumental variable is a streamlined sign-up page that allows an Uber user to sign up for Uber Eats. Not all subjects will sign up for Uber Eats, but the streamlined sign-up makes it easier for them to experience both Uber and Uber Eats. Thereafter, the subject’s outcome is unrelated to their signup experience. In other words, the streamlined signup influences the treatment, not the outcome.

If RCTs are not an option and hence confounders cannot be controlled for, the next best option is to attempt to **control for confounders** and measure the Conditional Average Treatment Effect (CATE). The CATE is an estimate of the treatment effect conditioned on all available covariates and confounders. Even if an RCT is available, if the treatment effects are heterogeneous across covariates, it might be preferable to measure the CATE. We call these Heterogeneous Treatment Effects (HTEs).
If an RCT is available and the treatment effects are heterogeneous across covariates, measuring the conditional average treatment effect(CATE) can be of interest. The CATE is an estimate of the treatment effect conditioned on all available experiment covariates and confounders. We call these Heterogeneous Treatment Effects (HTEs).


Example Use Cases
Expand Down
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion docs/index.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -7,10 +7,10 @@ Contents:
:maxdepth: 2

about
methodology
installation
quickstart
examples
methodology
interpretation
validation
causalml
Expand Down
11 changes: 11 additions & 0 deletions docs/installation.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -102,3 +102,14 @@ Windows
See content in https://github.com/uber/causalml/issues/678


Running Tests
-------------

Run all tests with:

.. code-block:: bash

pytest -vs tests/ --cov causalml/


Add ``--runtf`` to run optional tensorflow tests which will be skipped by default.
Loading