What is Inverse Propensity Scoring (IPS)?

Updated May 17, 2026

Short answer

IPS corrects bias in offline evaluation using action probabilities.

Deep explanation

IPS reweights observed rewards by inverse probability of the action taken under the logging policy. This corrects selection bias in observational datasets, enabling unbiased estimation of new policies. However, IPS can have high variance when propensities are small.

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