Laplace's Causal Demon - Criteo AI Lab

Laplace’s Causal Demon

Bayesian inference is a general tool for decision making in an uncertain world. The modern formulation due to Ramsey, de Finetti and Savage provides an axiomization for decision making under uncertainty. Bayesian inference is characterized by rigid principles but flexible assumptions and it is at the heart of modern artificial intelligence. Causal inference is a largely parallel theoretical development which focuses on identification of causal effect, prediction and ultimately optimization of the effect of interventions. Curiously many of the most useful causal inference techniques are not easy to motivate using Bayesian principles. For example the widely used Horvitz-Thompson estimator can be used to estimate causal effects and has excellent frequentist properties but appears to violate the conditionality principle. Similarly, Pearl’s do-calculus augments probability theory with additional rules to adapt to causal applications. This webinar series will be an exploration of the intersection of Bayesian inference and causal inference. Our speakers will help us understand how we can use these two frameworks in order to solve applied problems, and will consider if these different frameworks are in conflict or are complimentary.

The audience is machine learning practitioners and statisticians from academia and industry.

To stay informed follow us on twitter, or we have a Google Group for general announcements and discussions related to the seminar series. Join the group here.

Full schedule

The registration link will allow you to see the time of the event in your timezone.

You should register individually for each seminar.

Date Time UTC Time Paris Time New York Speaker Title Video
28 Feb 2022 16.00 17.00 11 .00 Christopher Sims Large Parameter Spaces and Weighted Data: A Bayesian Perspective Video
2 March 2022 16.00 17.00 11 .00 Yixin Wang Representation Learning: A Causal Perspective
3 March 2022 16.00 17.00 11.00 Fan Li Propensity score in Bayesian causal inference: why, why not, and how? Video
7 March 2022 16.00 17.00 11.00 Andrew Gelman Bayesian Methods in Causal Inference and Decision Making Video
9 March 2022 16.00 17.00 11.00 David Rohde Causal Inference is (Bayesian) Inference – A beautifully simple idea that not everyone accepts Video

Please note there is a limit of 500 registrations to an event, so please only register if plan to attend.

Organisers

Scientific Committee

‪Eustache Diemert‬‬
Mike Gartrell
Alberto Lumbreras
David Rohde
Maxime Vono

Organising Committee

Carla Delattre – Krumbholz

Previous Editions

28 Feb 2022 Christopher Sims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_A._Sims) #### Christopher Sims Large Parameter Spaces and Weighted Data: A Bayesian Perspective >> Talk page
2 Mar 2022 Yixin Wang](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gFLW9qcAAAAJ&hl=en) #### Yixin Wang Representation Learning: A Causal Perspective
3 Mar 2022 Fan Li](https://www2.stat.duke.edu/~fl35/) #### Fan Li Propensity score in Bayesian causal inference: why, why not, and how? >> Talk page
7 Mar 2022 Andrew Gelman](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/) #### Andrew Gelman Bayesian Methods in Causal Inference and Decision Making >> Talk page
9 Mar 2022 David Rohde](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9SBYirYAAAAJ&hl=en) #### David Rohde Causal Inference is (Bayesian) Inference – A beautifully simple idea that not everyone accepts >> Talk page