Causality,the science of cause and effect,has made it possible to create a new family of models.Such models are often referred to as causal models.Unlike those of mathematical,numerical,empirical,or machine learning(M...Causality,the science of cause and effect,has made it possible to create a new family of models.Such models are often referred to as causal models.Unlike those of mathematical,numerical,empirical,or machine learning(ML)nature,causal models hope to tie the cause(s)to the effect(s)pertaining to a phenomenon(i.e.,data generating process)through causal principles.This paper presents one of the first works at creating causal models in the area of structural and construction engineering.To this end,this paper starts with a brief review of the principles of causality and then adopts four causal discovery algorithms,namely,PC(Peter-Clark),FCI(fast causal inference),GES(greedy equivalence search),and GRa SP(greedy relaxation of the sparsest permutation),have been used to examine four phenomena,including predicting the load-bearing capacity of axially loaded members,fire resistance of structural members,shear strength of beams,and resistance of walls against impulsive(blast)loading.Findings from this study reveal the possibility and merit of discovering complete and partial causal models.Finally,this study also proposes two simple metrics that can help assess the performance of causal discovery algorithms.展开更多
The learning algorithms of causal discovery mainly include score-based methods and genetic algorithms(GA).The score-based algorithms are prone to searching space explosion.Classical GA is slow to converge,and prone to...The learning algorithms of causal discovery mainly include score-based methods and genetic algorithms(GA).The score-based algorithms are prone to searching space explosion.Classical GA is slow to converge,and prone to falling into local optima.To address these issues,an improved GA with domain knowledge(IGADK)is proposed.Firstly,domain knowledge is incorporated into the learning process of causality to construct a new fitness function.Secondly,a dynamical mutation operator is introduced in the algorithm to accelerate the convergence rate.Finally,an experiment is conducted on simulation data,which compares the classical GA with IGADK with domain knowledge of varying accuracy.The IGADK can greatly reduce the number of iterations,populations,and samples required for learning,which illustrates the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.展开更多
A new approach for abnormal behavior detection was proposed using causality analysis and sparse reconstruction. To effectively represent multiple-object behavior, low level visual features and causality features were ...A new approach for abnormal behavior detection was proposed using causality analysis and sparse reconstruction. To effectively represent multiple-object behavior, low level visual features and causality features were adopted. The low level visual features, which included trajectory shape descriptor, speeded up robust features and histograms of optical flow, were used to describe properties of individual behavior, and causality features obtained by causality analysis were introduced to depict the interaction information among a set of objects. In order to cope with feature noisy and uncertainty, a method for multiple-object anomaly detection was presented via a sparse reconstruction. The abnormality of the testing sample was decided by the sparse reconstruction cost from an atomically learned dictionary. Experiment results show the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison with other state-of-the-art methods on the public databases for abnormal behavior detection.展开更多
Many digital platforms have employed free-content promotion strategies to deal with the high uncertainty levels regarding digital content products.However,the diversity of digital content products and user heterogenei...Many digital platforms have employed free-content promotion strategies to deal with the high uncertainty levels regarding digital content products.However,the diversity of digital content products and user heterogeneity in content preference may blur the impact of platform promotions across users and products.Therefore,free-content promotion strategies should be adapted to allocate marketing resources optimally and increase revenue.This study develops personal-ized free-content promotion strategies based on individual-level heterogeneous treatment effects and explores the causes of their heterogeneity,focusing on the moderating effect of user engagement-related variables.To this end,we utilize ran-dom field experimental data provided by a top Chinese e-book platform.We employ a framework that combines machine learning with econometric causal inference methods to estimate individual treatment effects and analyze their potential mechanisms.The analysis shows that,on average,free-content promotions lead to a significant increase in consumer pay-ments.However,the higher the level of user engagement,the lower the payment lift caused by promotions,as more-engaged users are more strongly affected by the cannibalization effect of free-content promotion.This study introduces a novel causal research design to help platforms improve their marketing strategies.展开更多
文摘Causality,the science of cause and effect,has made it possible to create a new family of models.Such models are often referred to as causal models.Unlike those of mathematical,numerical,empirical,or machine learning(ML)nature,causal models hope to tie the cause(s)to the effect(s)pertaining to a phenomenon(i.e.,data generating process)through causal principles.This paper presents one of the first works at creating causal models in the area of structural and construction engineering.To this end,this paper starts with a brief review of the principles of causality and then adopts four causal discovery algorithms,namely,PC(Peter-Clark),FCI(fast causal inference),GES(greedy equivalence search),and GRa SP(greedy relaxation of the sparsest permutation),have been used to examine four phenomena,including predicting the load-bearing capacity of axially loaded members,fire resistance of structural members,shear strength of beams,and resistance of walls against impulsive(blast)loading.Findings from this study reveal the possibility and merit of discovering complete and partial causal models.Finally,this study also proposes two simple metrics that can help assess the performance of causal discovery algorithms.
基金supported by the National Social Science Fund of China(2022-SKJJ-B-084).
文摘The learning algorithms of causal discovery mainly include score-based methods and genetic algorithms(GA).The score-based algorithms are prone to searching space explosion.Classical GA is slow to converge,and prone to falling into local optima.To address these issues,an improved GA with domain knowledge(IGADK)is proposed.Firstly,domain knowledge is incorporated into the learning process of causality to construct a new fitness function.Secondly,a dynamical mutation operator is introduced in the algorithm to accelerate the convergence rate.Finally,an experiment is conducted on simulation data,which compares the classical GA with IGADK with domain knowledge of varying accuracy.The IGADK can greatly reduce the number of iterations,populations,and samples required for learning,which illustrates the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
基金Project(50808025) supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaProject(20090162110057) supported by the Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education,China
文摘A new approach for abnormal behavior detection was proposed using causality analysis and sparse reconstruction. To effectively represent multiple-object behavior, low level visual features and causality features were adopted. The low level visual features, which included trajectory shape descriptor, speeded up robust features and histograms of optical flow, were used to describe properties of individual behavior, and causality features obtained by causality analysis were introduced to depict the interaction information among a set of objects. In order to cope with feature noisy and uncertainty, a method for multiple-object anomaly detection was presented via a sparse reconstruction. The abnormality of the testing sample was decided by the sparse reconstruction cost from an atomically learned dictionary. Experiment results show the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison with other state-of-the-art methods on the public databases for abnormal behavior detection.
基金supported by the Anhui Postdoctoral Scientific Research Program Foundation(2022B579).
文摘Many digital platforms have employed free-content promotion strategies to deal with the high uncertainty levels regarding digital content products.However,the diversity of digital content products and user heterogeneity in content preference may blur the impact of platform promotions across users and products.Therefore,free-content promotion strategies should be adapted to allocate marketing resources optimally and increase revenue.This study develops personal-ized free-content promotion strategies based on individual-level heterogeneous treatment effects and explores the causes of their heterogeneity,focusing on the moderating effect of user engagement-related variables.To this end,we utilize ran-dom field experimental data provided by a top Chinese e-book platform.We employ a framework that combines machine learning with econometric causal inference methods to estimate individual treatment effects and analyze their potential mechanisms.The analysis shows that,on average,free-content promotions lead to a significant increase in consumer pay-ments.However,the higher the level of user engagement,the lower the payment lift caused by promotions,as more-engaged users are more strongly affected by the cannibalization effect of free-content promotion.This study introduces a novel causal research design to help platforms improve their marketing strategies.
