A3 LBA
Decision Memo for a Real World Client
ICS212
The Assignment
ICS212 Fall 2022
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Interview someone from a government agency, business, NGO, or other organization...
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...to learn about an unresolved real-world decision problem of consequence (faced by the interviewee)...
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...that could be at least partially addressed by applying methods and concepts covered in the class.
- Draft a memo written to the interviewee as client, connecting concepts and skills covered in ICS212 to the decision problem.
YOU ARE NOT EXPECTED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Just frame the problem in a useful way (using non-technical language) and connect problem to relevant methods and data. You are not expected to collect or assemble or analyze data. You ARE expected to describe how and why data might be assembled and analyzed.
Example*
ICS212 Fall 2022
We've interviewed someone from the Pink Frog Electric Scooter Company. Here's a synopsis of what we learned
*loosely based on student project
Pink Frog (a pseudonym) scooters is a transportation startup that provides dockless electric scooters via an innovative rental business model: Download the app on your smartphone for a scooter company and use the map to find a nearby scooter. Enter a credit card and scan a barcode to unlock the scooter. Go for a ride. Park the scooter anywhere and end the ride on the app.
Example*
ICS212 Fall 2022
*loosely based on student project
Bird scooters currently has 10,000 scooters in San Francisco. On any given day 100-200 of them are out of service due to vandalism. The vandalism problem has been around since the beginning of scooter deployment 3 years ago and it is getting worse. This is especially surprising because at the end of 2021 several anti-vandalism devices were added to every scooter in circulation.
The CEO is convinced that the devices actually caused the increase in vandalism. They claim that the visibility of the anti-vandalism measures essentially taunts people into vandalizing the scooters and so they are proposing to remove these devices and replace them with a much less visible alternative.
One consultant suggested an alternative explanation. Perhaps the increase in vandalism was due to the increase in the number of scooters in the city, that is, the density of scooters in the city.
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
Fortunately the company has fine grained data about where the scooters are all the time and they know where in the city the scooter was when it was made inoperable by vandalism since that is where they recover it.
The company wants to figure out how to minimize vandalism of their scooters while maximizing accessibility, public opinion and user enjoyment, and profit.
Can we help?
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
The next three questions are to help us get our "causal inference hat" on. They may also be helpful later when we write the memo if we want to help the client understand how the causal analysis we might propose is different from how they've been thinking about the problem.
Describe a descriptive analysis that might be important to them.
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
Give an example of a predictive analysis that’s important to them.
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
Have they asked a causal question? Or a nearly causal question? Can you rephrase what you have heard so far as a causal question?
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
It is common in cases like this for people to suggest questions or a data situation that appears to be amenable to causal analysis but is not. Do we have anything like that here? What is the obstacle to causal analysis in the case you identify and how might it be remedied?
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
Next we get a little more focused on the consulting question. Some of the questions that follow might be harder to answer or even not necessary to answer at this point for this problem, but think them through.
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
What are the units? You should probably identify a number of different possibilities. The most obvious one isn't always the one that ultimately makes sense.
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
What is the outcome? What is/are the intervention(s)? What are the observable covariates? You may not be able to depend strictly on the words you heard in the interview for these. You might have to use your imagination or do some secondary research. The point here is to sketch the full range of things that might be involved in causal relations around the things we care about.
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
Describe a "naive" causal effect in the situation at hand.
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
Has an experiment been done? Could an experiment be done?
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
And let's also think about some other things we have learned so far.
Example
ICS212 Fall 2022
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Is there an application of cross validation here?
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Is there an application of basic RCM here? What does the ATET/NCE/SB equation look like in this case?
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How might this case be used as an example of how we think about SUTVA and how is it relevant here?
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Does this sort of problem invite the use of decision trees?
- What are some straightforward regression analyses we might undertake? What if this case were examined using the ideas in LP8 (Gary King on how to write about regression)?