The Magmoid of Normalized Stochastic Kernels
Category Theory
2026-02-02 v2
Abstract
Normalization, , is almost a distributive law; but because one of the distributive law axioms only holds up-to-idempotent, it yields a non-associative composition of normalized kernels. We introduce the Markov magmoid of normalized stochastic kernels: a normalized-by-construction semantics for probabilistic inference, unifying exact Bayesian observations and interventions as two parenthesizations of the same composite. Front-door and back-door criteria follow from the axioms of Markov magmoids; we implement these with non-associative monadic notation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.01131,
title = {The Magmoid of Normalized Stochastic Kernels},
author = {Elena Di Lavore and Mario Román and Márk Széles},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.01131},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
28 pages