Omitted Labels Induce Nontransitive Paradoxes in Causality

Bijan Mazaheri; Siddharth Jain; Matthew Cook; Jehoshua Bruck

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arXiv · 2311.06840

Omitted Labels Induce Nontransitive Paradoxes in Causality

Bijan Mazaheri·Siddharth Jain·Matthew Cook·Jehoshua Bruck

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Abstract

We explore "omitted label contexts," in which training data is limited to a subset of the possible labels. This setting is standard among specialized human experts or specific, focused studies. By studying Simpson's paradox, we observe that ``correct'' adjustments sometimes require non-exchangeable treatment and control groups. A generalization of Simpson's paradox leads us to study networks of conclusions drawn from different contexts, within which a paradox of nontransitivity arises. We prove that the space of possible nontransitive structures in these networks exactly corresponds to structures that form from aggregating ranked-choice votes.

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cs.LG cs.AI cs.IT cs.SI math.IT stat.ME

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Bijan Mazaheri, Siddharth Jain, Matthew Cook, Jehoshua Bruck. 2023-11-12. Omitted Labels Induce Nontransitive Paradoxes in Causality. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.06840

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