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COMPEL Glossary / synthetic-control

Synthetic control

A counterfactual constructed from a weighted combination of untreated donor units — the "synthetic" version of the treated unit.

What this means in practice

Used where only one (or a few) units receive the AI treatment and a clean control is unavailable; particularly relevant to enterprise-scale rollouts.

Synonyms

synthetic control method , SCM

See also

  • Difference-in-differences (DiD) — A quasi-experimental design comparing treated and control trajectories over time — identifying causal effect from differential change.
  • Counterfactual outcome — The outcome that would have occurred without the AI intervention — the benchmark against which incremental AI value is measured.
  • Propensity-score matching — An observational-study method matching treated and control units on estimated probability of receiving treatment, then comparing outcomes across matched pairs.

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