An Automated Approach to Causal Inference in Discrete Settings
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Applied research conditions often make it impossible to point-identify causal estimands without untenable assumptions. Partial identification—bounds on the range of possible solutions—is a principled alternative, but the difficulty of deriving bounds in idiosyncratic settings has restricted their application. We present a general, automated numerical approach to causal inference in discrete settings. We show causal questions with discrete data reduce to polynomial programming problems, then present an algorithm to automatically bound causal effects using efficient dual relaxation and spatial branch-and-bound techniques. The user declares an estimand, states assumptions, and provides data—however incomplete or mismeasured. The algorithm then searches over admissible data-generating processes and outputs the most precise possible range consistent with available information—i.e., sharp bounds—including a point-identified solution if one exists. Because this search can be computationally intensive, our procedure reports and continually refines non-sharp ranges guaranteed to contain the truth at all times, even when the algorithm is not run to completion. Moreover, it offers an ε-sharpness guarantee, characterizing the worst-case looseness of the incomplete bounds. These techniques are implemented in our Python package, autobounds. Analytically validated simulations show the method accommodates classic obstacles including confounding, selection, measurement error, noncompliance, and nonresponse.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.017 | 0.107 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".