Paper List
-
A Unified Variational Principle for Branching Transport Networks: Wave Impedance, Viscous Flow, and Tissue Metabolism
This paper solves the core problem of predicting the empirically observed branching exponent (α≈2.7) in mammalian arterial trees, which neither Murray...
-
Household Bubbling Strategies for Epidemic Control and Social Connectivity
This paper addresses the core challenge of designing household merging (social bubble) strategies that effectively control epidemic risk while maximiz...
-
Empowering Chemical Structures with Biological Insights for Scalable Phenotypic Virtual Screening
This paper addresses the core challenge of bridging the gap between scalable chemical structure screening and biologically informative but resource-in...
-
A mechanical bifurcation constrains the evolution of cell sheet folding in the family Volvocaceae
This paper addresses the core problem of why there is an evolutionary gap in species with intermediate cell numbers (e.g., 256 cells) in Volvocaceae, ...
-
Bayesian Inference in Epidemic Modelling: A Beginner’s Guide Illustrated with the SIR Model
This guide addresses the core challenge of estimating uncertain epidemiological parameters (like transmission and recovery rates) from noisy, real-wor...
-
Geometric framework for biological evolution
This paper addresses the fundamental challenge of developing a coordinate-independent, geometric description of evolutionary dynamics that bridges gen...
-
A multiscale discrete-to-continuum framework for structured population models
This paper addresses the core challenge of systematically deriving uniformly valid continuum approximations from discrete structured population models...
-
Whole slide and microscopy image analysis with QuPath and OMERO
使QuPath能够直接分析存储在OMERO服务器中的图像而无需下载整个数据集,克服了大规模研究的本地存储限制。
Realizing Common Random Numbers: Event-Keyed Hashing for Causally Valid Stochastic Models
Institute for Disease Modeling, Gates Foundation | Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina | Institute for Disease Modeling, Gates Foundation
30秒速读
IN SHORT: This paper addresses the critical problem that standard stateful PRNG implementations in agent-based models violate causal validity by making random draws execution-path-dependent, thereby breaking the fundamental assumption of common random numbers needed for valid counterfactual comparisons.
核心创新
- Methodology Identifies and formalizes the fundamental mismatch between scientific causal structure in ABMs and program-level causal structure induced by stateful PRNGs through the lens of Structural Causal Models (SCMs)
- Methodology Introduces the concept of 'execution invariance' as a necessary property for causally valid ABM counterfactuals, requiring that exogenous noise terms remain stable across intervention scenarios
- Methodology Proposes event-keyed random number generation combining counter-based PRNGs (Philox/Threefry) with event identifiers to decouple random draws from simulation execution order
主要结论
- Standard stateful PRNG practices violate the execution invariance required for valid SCM-style interventions, as demonstrated through formal analysis of the structural causal model framework
- Event-keyed hashing with counter-based PRNGs restores the stable event-indexed exogenous structure assumed by SCMs, enabling proper counterfactual comparisons with variance reduction benefits
- The proposed approach allows ABMs to function as valid structural causal models under interventions, maintaining the critical property that interventions change only structural equations while holding exogenous noise terms fixed
摘要: Agent-based models (ABMs) are widely used to estimate causal treatment effects via paired counterfactual simulation. A standard variance reduction technique is common random numbers (CRNs), which couples replicates across intervention scenarios by sharing the same random inputs. In practice, CRNs are implemented by reusing the same base seed, but this relies on a critical assumption: that the same draw index corresponds to the same modeled event across scenarios. Stateful pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs) violate this assumption whenever interventions alter the simulation's execution path, because any change in control flow shifts the draw index used for all downstream events. We argue that this execution-path-dependent draw indexing is not only a variance-reduction nuisance, but represents a fundamental mismatch between the scientific causal structure ABMs are intended to encode and the program-level causal structure induced by stateful PRNG implementations. Formalizing this through the lens of structural causal models (SCMs), we show that standard PRNG practices yield causally incoherent paired counterfactual comparisons even when the mechanistic specification is otherwise sound. We show that a remedy is to combine counter-based random number generators (e.g., Philox/Threefry) with event identifiers. This decouples random number generation from simulation execution order by making random draws explicit functions of the particular modeled event that called them, restoring the stable event-indexed exogenous structure assumed by SCMs.