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Related papers: Causal Discovery Using Proxy Variables

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The problem of using observed correlations to infer causal relations is relevant to a wide variety of scientific disciplines. Yet given correlations between just two classical variables, it is impossible to determine whether they arose from…

We investigate the estimation of the causal effect of a treatment variable on an outcome in the presence of a latent confounder. We first show that the causal effect is identifiable under certain conditions when data is available from…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-06-16 Yaroslav Kivva , Sina Akbari , Saber Salehkaleybar , Negar Kiyavash

Given a response $Y$ and a vector $X = (X^1, \dots, X^d)$ of $d$ predictors, we investigate the problem of inferring direct causes of $Y$ among the vector $X$. Models for $Y$ that use all of its causal covariates as predictors enjoy the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-03-12 Rune Christiansen , Jonas Peters

Understanding the causal relationships that underlie a system is a fundamental prerequisite to accurate decision-making. In this work, we explore how expert knowledge can be used to improve the data-driven identification of causal graphs,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-07-06 Stephanie Long , Alexandre Piché , Valentina Zantedeschi , Tibor Schuster , Alexandre Drouin

The presence of latent variables can greatly complicate inferences about causal relations between measured variables from statistical data. In many cases, the presence of latent variables makes it impossible to determine for two measured…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-03-26 Peter L. Spirtes

Causal disentanglement aims to learn about latent causal factors behind data, holding the promise to augment existing representation learning methods in terms of interpretability and extrapolation. Recent advances establish identifiability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-25 Ryan Welch , Jiaqi Zhang , Caroline Uhler

Relationship between two popular modeling frameworks of causal inference from observational data, namely, causal graphical model and potential outcome causal model is discussed. How some popular causal effect estimators found in…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-11-03 Priyantha Wijayatunga

We consider causal models with two observed variables and one latent variables, each variable being discrete, with the goal of characterizing the possible distributions on outcomes that can result from controlling one of the observed…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2021-03-05 Kevin Shu

Autonomous robots are required to reason about the behaviour of dynamic agents in their environment. The creation of models to describe these relationships is typically accomplished through the application of causal discovery techniques.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-03-07 Rhys Howard , Lars Kunze

We consider linear structural equation models with explicitly modelled latent variables. In such models, observed and latent variables solve linear equations including stochastic noise terms. The goal of our work is to identify the direct…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-28 Tom Hochsprung , Nils Sturma , Jakob Runge , Mathias Drton , Andreas Gerhardus

Linear structural causal models (SCMs) -- in which each observed variable is generated by a subset of the other observed variables as well as a subset of the exogenous sources -- are pervasive in causal inference and casual discovery.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-09 Yuqin Yang , Mohamed Nafea , AmirEmad Ghassami , Negar Kiyavash

Deep learning has revolutionized the field of artificial intelligence. Based on the statistical correlations uncovered by deep learning-based methods, computer vision has contributed to tremendous growth in areas like autonomous driving and…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2023-08-01 Kexuan Zhang , Qiyu Sun , Chaoqiang Zhao , Yang Tang

Explaining artificial intelligence or machine learning models is increasingly important. To use such data-driven systems wisely we must understand how they interact with the world, including how they depend causally on data inputs. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-06 Joshua R. Loftus , Lucius E. J. Bynum , Sakina Hansen

Methods that rely on proxies, without imposing strong parametric structure, are increasingly used to deal with unobserved variables in causal inference. One influential line of this work reconstructs latent distributions used to identify…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-12 Helen Guo , Ilya Shpitser , Elizabeth L. Ogburn

Causal discovery aims to learn causal relationships between variables from targeted data, making it a fundamental task in machine learning. However, causal discovery algorithms often rely on unverifiable causal assumptions, which are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-15 Huiyang Yi , Yanyan He , Duxin Chen , Mingyu Kang , He Wang , Wenwu Yu

Explainable AI (XAI) methods identify which features are relevant to a model's predictions but often fail to clarify why certain decisions are made. In this work, we present a novel method that integrates causality with argument-based…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Henry Salgado , Meagan R. Kendall , Martine Ceberio

Understanding causality helps to structure interventions to achieve specific goals and enables predictions under interventions. With the growing importance of learning causal relationships, causal discovery tasks have transitioned from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-15 Hang Chen , Keqing Du , Xinyu Yang , Chenguang Li

Causal effect estimation is a critical task in statistical learning that aims to find the causal effect on subjects by identifying causal links between a number of predictor (or, explanatory) variables and the outcome of a treatment. In a…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-11-26 Tathagata Basu , Matthias C. M. Troffaes

In contemporary scientific research, understanding the distinction between correlation and causation is crucial. While correlation is a widely used analytical standard, it does not inherently imply causation. This paper addresses the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-27 Cao Zhihao , Qu Hongchun

Recovering causal structure in the presence of latent variables is an important but challenging task. While many methods have been proposed to handle it, most of them require strict and/or untestable assumptions on the causal structure. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Wei Chen , Linjun Peng , Zhiyi Huang , Haoyue Dai , Zhifeng Hao , Ruichu Cai , Kun Zhang