Attribute-based Propensity for Unbiased Learning in Recommender Systems: Algorithm and Case Studies

Many modern recommender systems train their models based on a large amount of implicit user feedback data. Due to the inherent bias in this data (e.g., position bias), learning from it directly can lead to suboptimal models. Recently, unbiased learning was proposed to address such problems by leveraging counterfactual techniques like inverse propensity weighting (IPW). In these methods, propensity scores estimation is usually limited to item’s display position in a single user interface (UI).