Related papers: The d-separation criterion in Categorical Probabil…
Given data sampled from a number of variables, one is often interested in the underlying causal relationships in the form of a directed acyclic graph. In the general case, without interventions on some of the variables it is only possible…
A fundamental challenge in the empirical sciences involves uncovering causal structure through observation and experimentation. Causal discovery entails linking the conditional independence (CI) invariances in observational data to their…
Among Judea Pearl's many contributions to Causality and Statistics, the graphical d-separation} criterion, the do-calculus and the mediation formula stand out. In this chapter we show that d-separation} provides direct insight into an…
Identifying and controlling bias is a key problem in empirical sciences. Causal diagram theory provides graphical criteria for deciding whether and how causal effects can be identified from observed (nonexperimental) data by covariate…
For a directed acyclic graph, there are two known criteria to decide whether any specific conditional independence statement is implied for all distributions factorized according to the given graph. Both criteria are based on special types…
Causal discovery algorithms aim at untangling complex causal relationships from data. Here, we study causal discovery and inference methods based on staged tree models, which can represent complex and asymmetric causal relationships between…
Algorithms for constraint-based causal discovery select graphical causal models among a space of possible candidates (e.g., all directed acyclic graphs) by executing a sequence of conditional independence tests. These may be used to inform…
Our aim is to detect mechanistic interaction between the effects of two causal factors on a binary response, as an aid to identifying situations where the effects are mediated by a common mechanism. We propose a formalization of mechanistic…
Understanding causal relationships between variables is fundamental across scientific disciplines. Most causal discovery algorithms rely on two key assumptions: (i) all variables are observed, and (ii) the underlying causal graph is…
Gaussian graphical models are semi-algebraic subsets of the cone of positive definite covariance matrices. Submatrices with low rank correspond to generalizations of conditional independence constraints on collections of random variables.…
Change point detection in time series aims to identify moments when the probability distribution of time series changes. It is widely applied in many areas, such as human activity sensing and medical science. In the context of multivariate…
We consider a a collection of categorical random variables. Of special interest is the causal effect on an outcome variable following an intervention on another variable. Conditionally on a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), we assume that the…
An important task in data analysis is the discovery of causal relationships between observed variables. For continuous-valued data, linear acyclic causal models are commonly used to model the data-generating process, and the inference of…
In this work, we propose a global model selection criterion to estimate the graph of conditional dependencies of a random vector based on a finite sample. By global criterion, we mean optimizing a function over the entire set of possible…
Statistical relationships in observed data can arise for several different reasons: the observed variables may be causally related, they may share a latent common cause, or there may be selection bias. Each of these scenarios can be…
Directed graphical models provide a useful framework for modeling causal or directional relationships for multivariate data. Prior work has largely focused on identifiability and search algorithms for directed acyclic graphical (DAG)…
Constraint-based causal discovery algorithms learn part of the causal graph structure by systematically testing conditional independences observed in the data. These algorithms, such as the PC algorithm and its variants, rely on graphical…
In social sciences and economics, causal inference traditionally focuses on assessing the impact of predefined treatments (or interventions) on predefined outcomes, such as the effect of education programs on earnings. Causal discovery, in…
We define what it means for a joint probability distribution to be compatible with a set of independent causal mechanisms, at a qualitative level -- or, more precisely, with a directed hypergraph ${\mathcal{A}}$, which is the qualitative…
The assumption that data samples are independent and identically distributed (iid) is standard in many areas of statistics and machine learning. Nevertheless, in some settings, such as social networks, infectious disease modeling, and…