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Abstract: This work shows how to leverage causal inference to understand the behavior of complex learning systems interacting with their environment and predict the consequences of changes to the system. Such predictions allow both humans and algorithms to select changes that improve both the short-term and long-term performance of such systems. This work is illustrated by experiments carried out on the ad placement system associated with the Bing search engine.
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@techreport{tr-bottou-2012, author = {Bottou, L\'eon and Peters, Jonas and Qui\~{n}onero-Candela, Joaquin and Charles, Denis X. and Chickering, D. Max and Portugualy, Elon and Ray, Dipankar and Simard, Patrice and Snelson, Ed}, title = {Counterfactual Reasoning and Learning Systems}, institution = {arXiv:1209.2355}, month = {September} year = {2012}, url = {http://leon.bottou.org/papers/tr-bottou-2012}, }