English
Related papers

Related papers: Learning Sparse Causal Models is not NP-hard

200 papers

Causality is essential for understanding complex systems, such as the economy, the brain, and the climate. Constructing causal graphs often relies on either data-driven or expert-driven approaches, both fraught with challenges. The former…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-06-12 Kai-Hendrik Cohrs , Gherardo Varando , Emiliano Diaz , Vasileios Sitokonstantinou , Gustau Camps-Valls

We consider the minimum cost intervention design problem: Given the essential graph of a causal graph and a cost to intervene on a variable, identify the set of interventions with minimum total cost that can learn any causal graph with the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-30 Erik M. Lindgren , Murat Kocaoglu , Alexandros G. Dimakis , Sriram Vishwanath

We consider the problem of learning causal directed acyclic graphs from an observational joint distribution. One can use these graphs to predict the outcome of interventional experiments, from which data are often not available. We show…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-08-18 Jonas Peters , Joris Mooij , Dominik Janzing , Bernhard Schölkopf

Causal discovery from data with unmeasured confounding factors is a challenging problem. This paper proposes an approach based on the f-GAN framework, learning the binary causal structure independent of specific weight values. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Mujin Zhou , Junzhe Zhang

We present FLOP (Fast Learning of Order and Parents), a score-based causal discovery algorithm for linear models. It pairs fast parent selection with iterative Cholesky-based score updates, cutting run-times over prior algorithms. This…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-02 Marcel Wienöbst , Leonard Henckel , Sebastian Weichwald

Controlling false positives (Type I errors) through statistical hypothesis testing is a foundation of modern scientific data analysis. Existing causal structure discovery algorithms either do not provide Type I error control or cannot scale…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-29 James Leiner , Brian Manzo , Aaditya Ramdas , Wesley Tansey

In this paper, the causal bandit problem is investigated, with the objective of maximizing the long-term reward by selecting an optimal sequence of interventions on nodes in an unknown causal graph. It is assumed that both the causal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-30 Chen Peng , Di Zhang , Urbashi Mitra

Causal identification is at the core of the causal inference literature, where complete algorithms have been proposed to identify causal queries of interest. The validity of these algorithms hinges on the restrictive assumption of having…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-30 Sina Akbari , Fateme Jamshidi , Ehsan Mokhtarian , Matthew J. Vowels , Jalal Etesami , Negar Kiyavash

The efficient sparse coding and reconstruction of signal vectors via linear observations has received a tremendous amount of attention over the last decade. In this context, the automated learning of a suitable basis or overcomplete…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2015-06-19 Andreas M. Tillmann

Understanding causal relationships between variables is a fundamental problem with broad impact in numerous scientific fields. While extensive research has been dedicated to learning causal graphs from data, its complementary concept of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Jiaqi Zhang , Kirankumar Shiragur , Caroline Uhler

Learning the structure of a causal graphical model using both observational and interventional data is a fundamental problem in many scientific fields. A promising direction is continuous optimization for score-based methods, which,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-28 Phillip Lippe , Taco Cohen , Efstratios Gavves

In this study, we address causal inference when only observational data and a valid causal ordering from the causal graph are available. We introduce a set of flow models that can recover component-wise, invertible transformation of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-16 Minh Khoa Le , Kien Do , Truyen Tran

We address the problem of prediction of multivariate data process using an underlying graph model. We develop a method that learns a sparse partial correlation graph in a tuning-free and computationally efficient manner. Specifically, the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-11-19 Arun Venkitaraman , Dave Zachariah

We consider the problem of learning causal models from observational data generated by linear non-Gaussian acyclic causal models with latent variables. Without considering the effect of latent variables, one usually infers wrong causal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-13 Saber Salehkaleybar , AmirEmad Ghassami , Negar Kiyavash , Kun Zhang

The PC algorithm is the state-of-the-art algorithm for causal structure discovery on observational data. It can be computationally expensive in the worst case due to the conditional independence tests are performed in an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-13 Kai Zhang , Chao Tian , Kun Zhang , Todd Johnson , Xiaoqian Jiang

Discovering causal structures with latent variables from observational data is a fundamental challenge in causal discovery. Existing methods often rely on constraint-based, iterative discrete searches, limiting their scalability to large…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-02 Parjanya Prashant , Ignavier Ng , Kun Zhang , Biwei Huang

The PC algorithm learns maximally oriented causal Bayesian networks. However, there is no equivalent complete algorithm for learning the structure of relational models, a more expressive generalization of Bayesian networks. Recent…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-09-27 Marc Maier , Katerina Marazopoulou , David Arbour , David Jensen

While feedback loops are known to play important roles in many complex systems, their existence is ignored in a large part of the causal discovery literature, as systems are typically assumed to be acyclic from the outset. When applying…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-09-18 Joris M. Mooij , Tom Claassen

We consider structure discovery of undirected graphical models from observational data. Inferring likely structures from few examples is a complex task often requiring the formulation of priors and sophisticated inference procedures.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-08-04 Eugene Belilovsky , Kyle Kastner , Gaël Varoquaux , Matthew Blaschko

Conditional-independence-based discovery uses statistical tests to identify a graphical model that represents the independence structure of variables in a dataset. These tests, however, can be unreliable, and algorithms are sensitive to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Philipp M. Faller , Dominik Janzing