Finding the causal effect of picking Slark in the game of Dota 2 on the final match outcome based on in-match events using the front-door adjustment

Finding the causal effect of picking Slark in the game of Dota 2 on the final match outcome based on in-match events using the front-door adjustment

Liang, Hendy (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science; TU Delft Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)

Karlsson, R.K.A. (mentor)
Krijthe, J.H. (mentor)
Hildebrandt, K.A. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Computer Science and Engineering

CSE3000 Research Project

2022-06-24

The front-door adjustment is a causal inference method with which it is possible to determine the causal effect of applying a treatment given a setting which satisfies the front-door criterion. This involves having a mediator through which all the causal effect flows from treatment to outcome. The front-door adjustment adjusts for confounders and tries to only measure the causal effect from treatment to outcome. The goal is to test the applicability of the front-door adjustment using the game of Dota 2 as a testing ground. The front-door adjustment has been applied to find the effect of picking ‘Slark’ on the outcome of the game. The mediator in this case is the enemy team buying an item called ‘Hurricane Pike’. Two different approaches have been used, both giving varying results. These varying results lead to different possible interpretations. This variety of interpretations therefore suggest that the front-door adjustment is not a valid method for this specific scenario, likely due to the complexity of the game and perhaps the simplified representation of the game in the data-set.

Front-Door Adjustment
Causal Inference
DotA 2

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:04089ca2-a6f7-44f5-9b91-f80fb53e5312

Student theses

bachelor thesis

© 2022 Hendy Liang