A Matching Procedure for Sequential Experiments that Iteratively Learns which Covariates Improve Power

10/12/2020

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by   Adam Kapelner, et al.

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We propose a dynamic allocation procedure that increases power and efficiency when measuring an average treatment effect in sequential randomized trials exploiting some subjects' previous assessed responses. Subjects arrive iteratively and are either randomized or paired to a previously randomized subject and administered the alternate treatment. The pairing is made via a dynamic matching criterion that iteratively learns which specific covariates are important to the response. We develop estimators for the average treatment effect as well as an exact test. We illustrate our method's increase in efficiency and power over other allocation procedures in both simulated scenarios and a clinical trial dataset. An R package SeqExpMatch for use by practitioners is available.