{"id":710026,"date":"2020-12-03T10:28:32","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T18:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&p=710026"},"modified":"2021-03-29T11:24:01","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T18:24:01","slug":"foundations-of-causal-inference-and-its-impacts-on-machine-learning","status":"publish","type":"msr-video","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/video\/foundations-of-causal-inference-and-its-impacts-on-machine-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Foundations of causal inference and its impacts on machine learning webinar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many key data science tasks are about decision-making. They require understanding the causes of an event and how to take action to improve future outcomes. Machine learning (ML) models rely on correlational patterns to predict the answer to a question but often fail at these decision-making tasks, as the very decisions and actions they drive change the patterns they rely on. Causal inference methods, in contrast, are designed to rely on patterns generated by stable and robust causal mechanisms, even as decisions and actions change. With insights gained from causal methods, the new, growing field of causal machine learning promises to address fundamental ML challenges in generalizability, interpretability, bias, and privacy.<\/p>\n

In this webinar, join Microsoft researchers Amit Sharma and Emre\u00a0K\u0131c\u0131man\u00a0to learn about the fundamentals of causal inference. You will learn how a target question of cause and effect can be captured in a formal graphical model and answered systematically using available data. The researchers will introduce a four-step causal modeling framework for analyzing decision-making tasks and walk-through code examples using the\u00a0DoWhy\u00a0Python library that implements the framework. You will also discover how causal methods can be useful to improve ML models in terms of their generalizability,\u00a0explainability, fairness, and robustness.<\/p>\n

Together, you\u2019ll explore:<\/p>\n