English

Wasserstein Conditional Independence Testing

Statistics Theory 2024-02-05 v2 Optimization and Control Statistics Theory

Abstract

We introduce a test for the conditional independence of random variables XX and YY given a random variable ZZ, specifically by sampling from the joint distribution (X,Y,Z)(X,Y,Z), binning the support of the distribution of ZZ, and conducting multiple pp-Wasserstein two-sample tests. Under a pp-Wasserstein Lipschitz assumption on the conditional distributions LXZ\mathcal{L}_{X|Z}, LYZ\mathcal{L}_{Y|Z}, and L(X,Y)Z\mathcal{L}_{(X,Y)|Z}, we show that it is possible to control the Type I and Type II error of this test, and give examples of explicit finite-sample error bounds in the case where the distribution of ZZ has compact support.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2107.14184,
  title  = {Wasserstein Conditional Independence Testing},
  author = {Andrew Warren},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.14184},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

31 pages. v2 contains major revision to Section 3, plus assorted expository improvements