论文标题
改善RCT数据上的隆升模型评估
Improving uplift model evaluation on RCT data
论文作者
论文摘要
估计治疗效果是数据分析师最具挑战性和最重要的任务之一。在许多应用程序(例如在线营销和个性化医学)中,需要将治疗分配给具有高阳性治疗效果的个人。提升模型有助于选择合适的人进行治疗,并最大程度地提高整体治疗效果(提升)。提升建模的主要挑战涉及模型评估。先前的文献提出了诸如Qini曲线和变换的结果平方误差之类的方法。但是,这些指标遭受了差异:它们的评估受到数据中随机噪声的强烈影响,该噪声在一定程度上使其信号任意。我们从理论上分析了提升评估指标的方差,并得出了基于结果的统计调整的差异降低方法。我们得出了简单的条件,在这些条件下,降低方差方法改善了提升评估指标,并在经验上证明了它们在模拟和现实世界中的好处。我们的论文提供了有力的证据,以在评估RCT数据上的隆重模型时默认情况下应用建议的差异程序。
Estimating treatment effects is one of the most challenging and important tasks of data analysts. In many applications, like online marketing and personalized medicine, treatment needs to be allocated to the individuals where it yields a high positive treatment effect. Uplift models help select the right individuals for treatment and maximize the overall treatment effect (uplift). A major challenge in uplift modeling concerns model evaluation. Previous literature suggests methods like the Qini curve and the transformed outcome mean squared error. However, these metrics suffer from variance: their evaluations are strongly affected by random noise in the data, which renders their signals, to a certain degree, arbitrary. We theoretically analyze the variance of uplift evaluation metrics and derive possible methods of variance reduction, which are based on statistical adjustment of the outcome. We derive simple conditions under which the variance reduction methods improve the uplift evaluation metrics and empirically demonstrate their benefits on simulated and real-world data. Our paper provides strong evidence in favor of applying the suggested variance reduction procedures by default when evaluating uplift models on RCT data.