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For a continuous random variable $Z$, testing conditional independence $X \perp\!\!\!\perp Y |Z$ is known to be a particularly hard problem. It constitutes a key ingredient of many constraint-based causal discovery algorithms. These…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-12-21 Philip A. Boeken , Joris M. Mooij

A simple and intuitive method for feature selection consists of choosing the feature subset that maximizes a nonparametric measure of dependence between the response and the features. A popular proposal from the literature uses the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-12 Keli Liu , Feng Ruan

Instrumental variable models allow us to identify a causal function between covariates $X$ and a response $Y$, even in the presence of unobserved confounding. Most of the existing estimators assume that the error term in the response $Y$…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-09-23 Sorawit Saengkyongam , Leonard Henckel , Niklas Pfister , Jonas Peters

The Hilbert Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC) is a kernel dependence measure that has applications in various aspects of machine learning. Conveniently, the objectives of different dimensionality reduction applications using HSIC often…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-09-12 Chieh Wu , Jared Miller , Yale Chang , Mario Sznaier , Jennifer Dy

The Hilbert--Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC) is a popular measure of the dependency between two random variables. The statistic dHSIC is an extension of HSIC that can be used to test joint independence of $d$ random variables. Such…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-05-15 David Rindt , Dino Sejdinovic , David Steinsaltz

Many tools exist to detect dependence between random variables, a core question across a wide range of machine learning, statistical, and scientific endeavors. Although several statistical tests guarantee eventual detection of any…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-23 Nathaniel Xu , Feng Liu , Danica J. Sutherland

Two-sample and independence tests with the kernel-based MMD and HSIC have shown remarkable results on i.i.d. data and stationary random processes. However, these statistics are not directly applicable to non-stationary random processes, a…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-01-05 Felix Laumann , Julius von Kügelgen , Mauricio Barahona

We introduce two novel non-parametric statistical hypothesis tests. The first test, called the relative test of dependency, enables us to determine whether one source variable is significantly more dependent on a first target variable or a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-11-18 Wacha Bounliphone , Eugene Belilovsky , Arthur Tenenhaus , Ioannis Antonoglou , Arthur Gretton , Matthew B. Blashcko

Kernel-based conditional independence (KCI) testing is a powerful nonparametric method commonly employed in causal discovery tasks. Despite its flexibility and statistical reliability, cubic computational complexity limits its application…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-05 Oliver Schacht , Biwei Huang

Kernel techniques are among the most popular and powerful approaches of data science. Among the key features that make kernels ubiquitous are (i) the number of domains they have been designed for, (ii) the Hilbert structure of the function…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-18 Florian Kalinke , Zoltán Szabó

Discovering the causal structure among a set of variables is a fundamental problem in many areas of science. In this paper, we propose Kernel Conditional Deviance for Causal Inference (KCDC) a fully nonparametric causal discovery method…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-13 Jovana Mitrovic , Dino Sejdinovic , Yee Whye Teh

Evaluating causal treatment effects in observational studies requires addressing confounding. While the back-door criterion enables identification through adjustment for observed covariates, it fails in the presence of unmeasured…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-04 Anna Guo , David Benkeser , Razieh Nabi

Multivariate time series data that capture the temporal evolution of interconnected systems are ubiquitous in diverse areas. Understanding the complex relationships and potential dependencies among co-observed variables is crucial for the…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-11-03 Zhaolu Liu , Robert L. Peach , Felix Laumann , Sara Vallejo Mengod , Mauricio Barahona

The standard constraint-based paradigm for causal discovery with incomplete data -- impute first, test second -- is frequently miscalibrated: any consistent conditional independence (CI) test rejects a true null with probability approaching…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-07 Thomas S. Robinson , Ranjit Lall

Conditional independence (CI) is central to causal inference, feature selection, and graphical modeling, yet it is untestable in many settings without additional assumptions. Existing CI tests often rely on restrictive structural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Alek Frohlich , Vladimir Kostic , Karim Lounici , Daniel Perazzo , Massimiliano Pontil

We describe a data-efficient, kernel-based approach to statistical testing of conditional independence. A major challenge of conditional independence testing is to obtain the correct test level (the specified upper bound on the rate of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Roman Pogodin , Antonin Schrab , Yazhe Li , Danica J. Sutherland , Arthur Gretton

Conditional independence is a fundamental concept in many areas of statistical research, including, for example, sufficient dimension reduction, causal inference, and statistical graphical models. In many modern applications, data arise in…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-17 Yin Tang , Bing Li

This paper deals with the problem of nonparametric independence testing, a fundamental decision-theoretic problem that asks if two arbitrary (possibly multivariate) random variables $X,Y$ are independent or not, a question that comes up in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-09-04 Aaditya Ramdas , Leila Wehbe

Measuring and testing the dependency between multiple random functions is often an important task in functional data analysis. In the literature, a model-based method relies on a model which is subject to the risk of model misspecification,…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-09-25 Rui Miao , Xiaoke Zhang , Raymond K. W. Wong

Distinguishing causal connections from correlations is important in many scenarios. However, the presence of unobserved variables, such as the latent confounder, can introduce bias in conditional independence testing commonly employed in…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-05-03 Mingzhou Liu , Xinwei Sun , Yu Qiao , Yizhou Wang