# Inverse Probability Weighting Model¶

Inverse probability weighting is a basic model to obtain average effect estimation.

It calculates the probability of each sample to belong to its group,
and use its inverse as the weight of that sample: $$w_i = \frac{1}{\Pr[A=a_i | X_i]}$$

In [1]:
%matplotlib inline
from causallib.estimation import IPW
from causallib.evaluation import PropensityEvaluator
from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression


#### Data:¶

The effect of quitting to smoke on weight loss.
Data example is taken from Hernan and Robins Causal Inference Book

In [2]:
data = load_nhefs()

Out[2]:
age race sex smokeintensity smokeyrs wt71 active_1 active_2 education_2 education_3 education_4 education_5 exercise_1 exercise_2 age^2 wt71^2 smokeintensity^2 smokeyrs^2 qsmk wt82_71
0 42 1 0 30 29 79.04 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1764 6247.3216 900 841 0 -10.093960
1 36 0 0 20 24 58.63 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1296 3437.4769 400 576 0 2.604970
2 56 1 1 20 26 56.81 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 3136 3227.3761 400 676 0 9.414486
3 68 1 0 3 53 59.42 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 4624 3530.7364 9 2809 0 4.990117
4 40 0 0 20 19 87.09 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1600 7584.6681 400 361 0 4.989251

#### Model:¶

The causal model has a machine learning model at its core, provided as learner parameter.
This ML model will be used to predict probability of quit smoking given the covariates.
These probabilities will be used to obtain $w_i$.
Then, we'll estimate average balanced outcome using Horvitz–Thompson estimator: $$\hat{E}[Y^a] = \frac{1}{\sum_{i:A_i=a}w_i} \cdot \sum_{i:A_i=a}w_i y_i$$

Lastly, we'll use these average counterfactual outcome estimation to predict the effect: $$\hat{E}[Y^1] - \hat{E}[Y^0]$$

In [5]:
# Train:
learner = LogisticRegression(solver="liblinear")
ipw = IPW(learner)
ipw.fit(data.X, data.a)

Out[5]:
IPW(clip_min=None, clip_max=None, use_stabilized=False,
learner=LogisticRegression(C=1.0, class_weight=None, dual=False, fit_intercept=True,
intercept_scaling=1, max_iter=100, multi_class='warn',
n_jobs=None, penalty='l2', random_state=None, solver='liblinear',
tol=0.0001, verbose=0, warm_start=False))
In [9]:
# We can now preict the weight of each individual:

Out[9]:
0    1.127390
1    1.196073
2    1.153628
3    1.851189
4    1.361857
dtype: float64
In [10]:
# Estimate average outcome
outcomes = ipw.estimate_population_outcome(data.X, data.a, data.y)
outcomes

Out[10]:
0    1.770965
1    5.284842
dtype: float64
In [12]:
# Estimate the effect:
effect = ipw.estimate_effect(outcomes[1], outcomes[0])
effect

Out[12]:
diff    3.513876
dtype: float64

We can see that on average, indiviudals who quit smoking gained 3.5 Lbs
on the course of 11 years

## Non-default parameters¶

We just saw a simple example hiding many model's parameters.
We now dig a bit deeper to every stage.

#### Model definition¶

Machine learning model:
Any scikit-learn model can be specified (even pipelines)

In [19]:
learner = LogisticRegression(penalty="l1", C=0.01, max_iter=500, solver='liblinear')


IPW model has two additional parameters:

• clip_min, clip_max: caliper values to trim very small or very large probabilities
• stabilized: Whether to scale weights with treatment prevalence
In [27]:
clip_min = 0.2
clip_max = 0.8
ipw = IPW(learner, clip_min=clip_min, clip_max=clip_max, use_stabilized=False)

In [28]:
ipw.fit(data.X, data.a);


#### Weight prediction options¶

Now we can predict the probability of quit smoking (treatment_values=1)
and validate our truncation worked:

In [29]:
probs = ipw.compute_propensity(data.X, data.a, treatment_values=1)
probs.between(clip_min, clip_max).all()

Fraction of values being truncated: 0.23499.

Out[29]:
True

During the "predict" phase (i.e. computing weights or probabilities),
We can alter the parameters we placed during initiation:

In [35]:
probs = ipw.compute_propensity(data.X, data.a, treatment_values=1, clip_min=0.0, clip_max=1.0)
probs.between(clip_min, clip_max).all()

Fraction of values being truncated: 0.00000.

Out[35]:
False

We can even predict stabilized weights.
However, we will get a warning.
This is because treatment prevalence is an estimation of the trainning data.
During fit, when the model had it's initial values, use_stabilized was False (default).
So when coming to compute_weights now, the model will use the prevalence from the provided data to estimate treatment prevalence.
This is not a big deal here, since we compute on the same data we trained on, but this does not have to be the general case.
(This warning would not exists if we redefine the model with use_stabilized=True and re-train it)

In [36]:
stabilized_weights = ipw.compute_weights(data.X, data.a, treatment_values=1,
clip_min=0.0, clip_max=1.0, use_stabilized=True)
weights = ipw.compute_weights(data.X, data.a, treatment_values=1,
clip_min=0.0, clip_max=1.0)
stabilized_weights.eq(weights).all()

Fraction of values being truncated: 0.00000.
Fraction of values being truncated: 0.00000.

D:\workspaces\MLHLS\CausalLib\causallib\estimation\ipw.py:119: RuntimeWarning: Stabilized is asked, however, the model was not trained using stabilization, and therefore, stabilized weights are taken from the provided treatment assignment.
RuntimeWarning)

Out[36]:
False

Since IPW utilizes probabilites, for each sample we can get a probability (or weight) for each treatment value

In [41]:
# ipw.compute_weight_matrix(data.X, data.a).head()

Fraction of values being truncated: 0.23499.

Out[41]:
0 1
0 0.800000 0.200000
1 0.800000 0.200000
2 0.716160 0.283840
3 0.520581 0.479419
4 0.765621 0.234379

#### Effect estimation options¶

We can choose whether we wish for addtive (diff) or multiplicative (ratio) effect
(If outcome y was probabilites, we could also ask for odds-ratio (or))

Providing weights w is optional, if not provided the weights would be simply calulated again using the provided X.

In [47]:
outcomes = ipw.estimate_population_outcome(data.X, data.a, data.y, w=weights)
effects = ipw.estimate_effect(outcomes[1], outcomes[0], effect_types=["diff", "ratio"])
effects

Out[47]:
diff     2.755327
ratio    2.142714
dtype: float64

## Evaluation¶

We can also evaluate the performance of the IPW model

#### Simple evaluation¶

Evaluates a fitted model on the provided dataset

In [48]:
evaluator = PropensityEvaluator(ipw)
results = evaluator.evaluate_simple(data.X, data.a, data.y, plots=None)

Fraction of values being truncated: 0.23499.
Fraction of values being truncated: 0.23499.
Fraction of values being truncated: 0.23499.
Fraction of values being truncated: 0.23499.


results contains models, plots and scores, but since we did not ask for plots, and did not refit the model, our main interest is the scores. We have both the prediction performance scores and a table1 with standardized mean differences with and without balancing

In [52]:
results.scores.prediction_scores

Out[52]:
accuracy precision recall f1 roc_auc avg_precision hinge matthews 0/1 brier
0 0.743934 0.541667 0.032258 0.06089 0.613656 0.36485 1.116457 0.081138 0.256066 0.184559
In [54]:
results.scores.covariate_balance.head()

Out[54]:
abs_smd weighted unweighted
covariate
age 0.048604 0.199560
race 0.167319 0.125194
sex 0.145940 0.113323
smokeintensity 0.018511 0.153345
smokeyrs 0.021658 0.112470

#### Thorough evaluation¶

Can check general model specification as it evaluates using cross-validation and refitting the model on each fold

In [56]:
from sklearn import metrics
plots=["roc_curve", "pr_curve", "weight_distribution",
"calibration", "covariate_balance_love", "covariate_balance_slope"]
metrics = {"roc_auc": metrics.roc_auc_score,
"avg_precision": metrics.average_precision_score,}
ipw = IPW(LogisticRegression(solver="liblinear"))
evaluator = PropensityEvaluator(ipw)
results = evaluator.evaluate_cv(data.X, data.a, data.y,
plots=plots, metrics_to_evaluate=metrics)

In [57]:
results.scores.prediction_scores

Out[57]:
roc_auc avg_precision
phase fold
train 0 0 0.662740 0.409813
1 0 0.656866 0.403830
2 0 0.644306 0.389844
3 0 0.670676 0.424142
4 0 0.663786 0.394718
valid 0 0 0.653791 0.400107
1 0 0.635352 0.345427
2 0 0.644042 0.397700
3 0 0.592295 0.323602
4 0 0.621713 0.402692
In [60]:
print(len(results.models))
results.models[2]

5

Out[60]:
IPW(clip_min=None, clip_max=None, use_stabilized=False,
learner=LogisticRegression(C=1.0, class_weight=None, dual=False, fit_intercept=True,
intercept_scaling=1, max_iter=100, multi_class='warn',
n_jobs=None, penalty='l2', random_state=None, solver='liblinear',
tol=0.0001, verbose=0, warm_start=False))
In [ ]: