Omitted Labels Induce Nontransitive Paradoxes in Causality
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.
Cite
Text
Mazaheri et al. "Omitted Labels Induce Nontransitive Paradoxes in Causality." Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Causal Learning and Reasoning, 2025.Markdown
[Mazaheri et al. "Omitted Labels Induce Nontransitive Paradoxes in Causality." Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Causal Learning and Reasoning, 2025.](https://mlanthology.org/clear/2025/mazaheri2025clear-omitted/)BibTeX
@inproceedings{mazaheri2025clear-omitted,
title = {{Omitted Labels Induce Nontransitive Paradoxes in Causality}},
author = {Mazaheri, Bijan and Jain, Siddharth and Cook, Matthew and Bruck, Jehoshua},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Causal Learning and Reasoning},
year = {2025},
pages = {818-833},
volume = {275},
url = {https://mlanthology.org/clear/2025/mazaheri2025clear-omitted/}
}