Introduction to TMLE

This is the second chapter in our text to deal with estimation.We started by defining the research question. This included our data, model for the probability distribution that generated the data, and the target parameter of the probability distribution of the data. We then presented the estimation of prediction functions using super learning. This leads us to the estimation of causal effects using the TMLE. This chapter introduces TMLE, and a deeper understanding of this methodology is provided in Chap. 5. Note that we use the abbreviation TMLE for targeted maximum likelihood estimation and the targeted maximum likelihood estimator. Later in this text, we discuss targeted minimum loss-based estimation, which can also be abbreviated TMLE.