Counterfactual Reasoning and Learning Systems

Using the search engine ad placement problem as an example, we explain the central role of causal inference for the design of learning systems interacting with their environments. Thanks to importance sampling techniques, data collected during randomized experiments gives precious cues to assist the designer of such learning systems and useful signals to drive learning algorithms. Thanks to a sharp distinction between the learning algorithms and the extraction of the signals that drive them, these methods can be tailored to causal models with different structures. Thanks to mathematical foundations shared with physics, these signals can describe the response of the system when equilibrium conditions are reached.