Causal Balancing for Domain Generalization
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Abstract (arXiv)
While machine learning models rapidly advance the state-of-the-art on various real-world tasks, out-of-domain (OOD) generalization remains a challenging problem given the vulnerability of these models to spurious correlations. We propose a balanced mini-batch sampling strategy to transform a biased data distribution into a spurious-free balanced distribution, based on the invariance of the underlying causal mechanisms for the data generation process. We argue that the Bayes optimal classifiers trained on such balanced distribution are minimax optimal across a diverse enough environment space. We also provide an identifiability guarantee of the latent variable model of the proposed data generation process, when utilizing enough train environments. Experiments are conducted on DomainBed, demonstrating empirically that our method obtains the best performance across 20 baselines reported on the benchmark.
Key facts. Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 56 of its 79 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Jun 2022.
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56 of 79 references.
References · 56
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38 more
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50 most cited of 56 All 56 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 2; 2024: 9; 2025: 5; 2026: 3.
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- 2023Flatness-Aware Minimization for Domain Generalizationcited by 27
- 2025A Causal Adjustment Module for Debiasing Scene Graph Generationcited by 14
- 2023Causal reasoning in typical computer vision taskscited by 12
- 2024Rethinking Misalignment in Vision-Language Model Adaptation from a Causal Perspectivecited by 9
- 2024HCVP: Leveraging Hierarchical Contrastive Visual Prompt for Domain Generalizationcited by 8
- 2024Learning Generalizable Models via Disentangling Spurious and Enhancing Potential Correlationscited by 5
- 2024Towards Identifiable Latent Additive Noise Modelscited by 5
- 2024Scalable Out-of-distribution Robustness in the Presence of Unobserved Confounderscited by 5
- 2025Gradient Extrapolation for Debiased Representation Learningcited by 4
- 2024How Does Distribution Matching Help Domain Generalization: An Information-theoretic Analysiscited by 3
- 2025Superclass-Guided Representation Disentanglement for Spurious Correlation Mitigationcited by 2
- 2024Revisiting Spurious Correlation in Domain Generalizationcited by 1
8 more
- 2024DICS: Find Domain-Invariant and Class-Specific Features for Out-of-Distribution Generalizationcited by 1
- 2025Subgroups Matter for Robust Bias Mitigationcited by 1
- 2025A Reverse Causal Framework to Mitigate Spurious Correlations for Debiasing Scene Graph Generationcited by 1
- 2022Direct-Effect Risk Minimization for Domain Generalizationcited by 0
- 2024Invariant Correlation of Representation with Label: Enhancing Domain Generalization in Noisy Environmentscited by 0
- 2026A Causal Framework for Mitigating Data Shifts in Healthcarecited by 0
- 2026How Many Samples Are Enough for Learning Across Domains?cited by 0
- 2026Can Domain Generalization be Guaranteed in Small-Sample Learning?cited by 0
- 2026Can Domain Generalization be Guaranteed in Small-Sample Learning?30 Sep 2026
- 2026How Many Samples Are Enough for Learning Across Domains?30 Sep 2026
- 2026A Causal Framework for Mitigating Data Shifts in Healthcare13 Mar 2026
- 2025Superclass-Guided Representation Disentanglement for Spurious Correlation Mitigation12 Aug 2025
- 2025A Reverse Causal Framework to Mitigate Spurious Correlations for Debiasing Scene Graph Generation29 May 2025
- 2025Subgroups Matter for Robust Bias Mitigation27 May 2025
- 2025A Causal Adjustment Module for Debiasing Scene Graph Generation22 Mar 2025
- 2025Gradient Extrapolation for Debiased Representation Learning17 Mar 2025
- 2024Scalable Out-of-distribution Robustness in the Presence of Unobserved Confounders29 Nov 2024
- 2024Rethinking Misalignment in Vision-Language Model Adaptation from a Causal Perspective1 Oct 2024
- 2024DICS: Find Domain-Invariant and Class-Specific Features for Out-of-Distribution Generalization13 Sep 2024
- 2024Invariant Correlation of Representation with Label: Enhancing Domain Generalization in Noisy Environments1 Jul 2024
8 more
- 2024Revisiting Spurious Correlation in Domain Generalization17 Jun 2024
- 2024How Does Distribution Matching Help Domain Generalization: An Information-theoretic Analysis14 Jun 2024
- 2024Towards Identifiable Latent Additive Noise Models23 Mar 2024
- 2024HCVP: Leveraging Hierarchical Contrastive Visual Prompt for Domain Generalization18 Jan 2024
- 2024Learning Generalizable Models via Disentangling Spurious and Enhancing Potential Correlations11 Jan 2024
- 2023Causal reasoning in typical computer vision tasks26 Jul 2023
- 2023Flatness-Aware Minimization for Domain Generalization20 Jul 2023
- 2022Direct-Effect Risk Minimization for Domain Generalization26 Nov 2022
- 2023Flatness-Aware Minimization for Domain Generalizationcited by 27
- 2025A Causal Adjustment Module for Debiasing Scene Graph Generationcited by 14
- 2024HCVP: Leveraging Hierarchical Contrastive Visual Prompt for Domain Generalizationcited by 8
- 2024Learning Generalizable Models via Disentangling Spurious and Enhancing Potential Correlationscited by 5
- 2024Towards Identifiable Latent Additive Noise Modelscited by 5
- 2024Scalable Out-of-distribution Robustness in the Presence of Unobserved Confounderscited by 5
- 2025Gradient Extrapolation for Debiased Representation Learningcited by 4
- 2024How Does Distribution Matching Help Domain Generalization: An Information-theoretic Analysiscited by 3
- 2024Revisiting Spurious Correlation in Domain Generalizationcited by 1
- 2024DICS: Find Domain-Invariant and Class-Specific Features for Out-of-Distribution Generalizationcited by 1
- 2025Subgroups Matter for Robust Bias Mitigationcited by 1
- 2025A Reverse Causal Framework to Mitigate Spurious Correlations for Debiasing Scene Graph Generationcited by 1
12 most cited of 17 All 17 (JSON)
- 2026Can Domain Generalization be Guaranteed in Small-Sample Learning?30 Sep 2026
- 2026How Many Samples Are Enough for Learning Across Domains?30 Sep 2026
- 2026A Causal Framework for Mitigating Data Shifts in Healthcare13 Mar 2026
- 2025A Reverse Causal Framework to Mitigate Spurious Correlations for Debiasing Scene Graph Generation29 May 2025
- 2025Subgroups Matter for Robust Bias Mitigation27 May 2025
- 2025A Causal Adjustment Module for Debiasing Scene Graph Generation22 Mar 2025
- 2025Gradient Extrapolation for Debiased Representation Learning17 Mar 2025
- 2024Scalable Out-of-distribution Robustness in the Presence of Unobserved Confounders29 Nov 2024
- 2024DICS: Find Domain-Invariant and Class-Specific Features for Out-of-Distribution Generalization13 Sep 2024
- 2024Invariant Correlation of Representation with Label: Enhancing Domain Generalization in Noisy Environments1 Jul 2024
- 2024Revisiting Spurious Correlation in Domain Generalization17 Jun 2024
- 2024How Does Distribution Matching Help Domain Generalization: An Information-theoretic Analysis14 Jun 2024
12 newest of 17 All 17 (JSON)