Title
Collapsing-Fast-Large-Almost-Matching-Exactly: A Matching Method for Causal Inference.
Abstract
We aim to create the highest possible quality of treatment-control matches for categorical data in the potential outcomes framework. Matching methods are heavily used in the social sciences due to their interpretability, but most matching methods in the past do not pass basic sanity checks in that they fail when irrelevant variables are introduced. Also, past methods tend to be either computationally slow or produce poor matches. The method proposed in this work aims to match units on a weighted Hamming distance, taking into account the relative importance of the covariates; the algorithm aims to match units on as many relevant variables as possible. To do this, the algorithm creates a hierarchy of covariate combinations on which to match (similar to downward closure), in the process solving an optimization problem for each unit in order to construct the optimal matches. The algorithm uses a single dynamic program to solve all of optimization problems simultaneously. Notable advantages of our method over existing matching procedures are its high-quality matches, versatility in handling different data distributions that may have irrelevant variables, and ability to handle missing data by matching on as many available covariates as possible
Year
Venue
Field
2018
arXiv: Machine Learning
Causal inference,Interpretability,Data mining,Covariate,Categorical variable,Computer science,Hamming distance,Missing data,Hierarchy,Optimization problem
DocType
Volume
Citations 
Journal
abs/1806.06802
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Awa Dieng100.34
Yameng Liu201.35
Sudeepa Roy326830.95
Cynthia Rudin472061.51
Alexander Volfovsky500.34