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Bayesian Inference for Confounding Variables and Limited Information

Published: September 5, 2025 | arXiv ID: 2509.05520v1

By: Ellis Scharfenaker, Duncan K. Foley

Potential Business Impact:

Finds hidden problems in data.

Business Areas:
A/B Testing Data and Analytics

A central challenge in statistical inference is the presence of confounding variables that may distort observed associations between treatment and outcome. Conventional "causal" methods, grounded in assumptions such as ignorability, exclude the possibility of unobserved confounders, leading to posterior inferences that overstate certainty. We develop a Bayesian framework that relaxes these assumptions by introducing entropy-favoring priors over hypothesis spaces that explicitly allow for latent confounding variables and partial information. Using the case of Simpson's paradox, we demonstrate how this approach produces logically consistent posterior distributions that widen credibly intervals in the presence of potential confounding. Our method provides a generalizable, information-theoretic foundation for more robust predictive inference in observational sciences.

Country of Origin
🇺🇸 United States

Page Count
21 pages

Category
Statistics:
Methodology