English

Which graphical models are difficult to learn?

Machine Learning 2009-11-07 v1 Statistical Mechanics Machine Learning

Abstract

We consider the problem of learning the structure of Ising models (pairwise binary Markov random fields) from i.i.d. samples. While several methods have been proposed to accomplish this task, their relative merits and limitations remain somewhat obscure. By analyzing a number of concrete examples, we show that low-complexity algorithms systematically fail when the Markov random field develops long-range correlations. More precisely, this phenomenon appears to be related to the Ising model phase transition (although it does not coincide with it).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0910.5761,
  title  = {Which graphical models are difficult to learn?},
  author = {Jose Bento and Andrea Montanari},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0910.5761},
  year   = {2009}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:05:09.671Z