English

Foundations of probability-raising causality in Markov decision processes

Logic in Computer Science 2024-08-07 v6

Abstract

This work introduces a novel cause-effect relation in Markov decision processes using the probability-raising principle. Initially, sets of states as causes and effects are considered, which is subsequently extended to regular path properties as effects and then as causes. The paper lays the mathematical foundations and analyzes the algorithmic properties of these cause-effect relations. This includes algorithms for checking cause conditions given an effect and deciding the existence of probability-raising causes. As the definition allows for sub-optimal coverage properties, quality measures for causes inspired by concepts of statistical analysis are studied. These include recall, coverage ratio and f-score. The computational complexity for finding optimal causes with respect to these measures is analyzed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.02973,
  title  = {Foundations of probability-raising causality in Markov decision processes},
  author = {Christel Baier and Jakob Piribauer and Robin Ziemek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.02973},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2201.08768

R2 v1 2026-06-28T00:51:30.715Z