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Intervention and Identifiability in Latent Variable Modelling

We consider the use of interventions for resolving a problem of unidentified statistical models. The leading examples are from latent variable modelling, an influential statistical tool in the social sciences. We first explain the problem of statistical identifiability and contrast it with the ident...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Romeijn, Jan-Willem, Williamson, Jon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6438491/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30996521
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11023-018-9460-y
Descripción
Sumario:We consider the use of interventions for resolving a problem of unidentified statistical models. The leading examples are from latent variable modelling, an influential statistical tool in the social sciences. We first explain the problem of statistical identifiability and contrast it with the identifiability of causal models. We then draw a parallel between the latent variable models and Bayesian networks with hidden nodes. This allows us to clarify the use of interventions for dealing with unidentified statistical models. We end by discussing the philosophical and methodological import of our result.