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Methods of causal discovery aim to identify causal structures in a data driven way. Existing algorithms are known to be unstable and sensitive to statistical errors, and are therefore rarely used with biomedical or epidemiological data. We…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-01 Christine W Bang , Janine Witte , Ronja Foraita , Vanessa Didelez

If $X,Y,Z$ denote sets of random variables, two different data sources may contain samples from $P_{X,Y}$ and $P_{Y,Z}$, respectively. We argue that causal discovery can help inferring properties of the `unobserved joint distributions'…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-05-12 Dominik Janzing , Philipp M. Faller , Leena Chennuru Vankadara

We describe a method that infers whether statistical dependences between two observed variables X and Y are due to a "direct" causal link or only due to a connecting causal path that contains an unobserved variable of low complexity, e.g.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-02-20 Dominik Janzing , Eleni Sgouritsa , Oliver Stegle , Jonas Peters , Bernhard Schoelkopf

Real world systems evolve in continuous-time according to their underlying causal relationships, yet their dynamics are often unknown. Existing approaches to learning such dynamics typically either discretize time -- leading to poor…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-17 Nicholas Tagliapietra , Katharina Ensinger , Christoph Zimmer , Osman Mian

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

Latent variable models are used to estimate variables of interest quantities which are observable only up to some measurement error. In many studies, such variables are known but not precisely quantifiable (such as "job satisfaction" in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-10-19 Ricardo Silva

Conditions are presented for different types of identifiability of discrete variable models generated over an undirected graph in which one node represents a binary hidden variable. These models can be seen as extensions of the latent class…

Methodology · Statistics 2013-12-12 Elena Stanghellini , Barbara Vantaggi

Many types of data from fields including natural language processing, computer vision, and bioinformatics, are well represented by discrete, compositional structures such as trees, sequences, or matchings. Latent structure models are a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Vlad Niculae , Caio F. Corro , Nikita Nangia , Tsvetomila Mihaylova , André F. T. Martins

Causal representation learning aims at identifying high-level causal variables from perceptual data. Most methods assume that all latent causal variables are captured in the high-dimensional observations. We instead consider a partially…

We establish conditions under which latent causal graphs are nonparametrically identifiable and can be reconstructed from unknown interventions in the latent space. Our primary focus is the identification of the latent structure in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-11-06 Yibo Jiang , Bryon Aragam

Causal discovery from data affected by latent confounders is an important and difficult challenge. Causal functional model-based approaches have not been used to present variables whose relationships are affected by latent confounders,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-05 Takashi Nicholas Maeda , Shohei Shimizu

The presence of unobserved common causes and measurement error poses two major obstacles to causal structure learning, since ignoring either source of complexity can induce spurious causal relations among variables of interest. We study…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Yuqin Yang , Mohamed Nafea , Negar Kiyavash , Kun Zhang , AmirEmad Ghassami

There are several existing algorithms that under appropriate assumptions can reliably identify a subset of the underlying causal relationships from observational data. This paper introduces the first computationally feasible score-based…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-07-02 Subramani Mani , Peter L. Spirtes , Gregory F. Cooper

In unsupervised causal representation learning for sequential data with time-delayed latent causal influences, strong identifiability results for the disentanglement of causally-related latent variables have been established in stationary…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-02 Xiangchen Song , Weiran Yao , Yewen Fan , Xinshuai Dong , Guangyi Chen , Juan Carlos Niebles , Eric Xing , Kun Zhang

Causal additive models provide a tractable yet expressive framework for causal discovery in the presence of hidden variables. When unobserved backdoor or causal paths exist between two variables, their causal relationship is often…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Thong Pham , Takashi Nicholas Maeda , Shohei Shimizu

At the heart of causal structure learning from observational data lies a deceivingly simple question: given two statistically dependent random variables, which one has a causal effect on the other? This is impossible to answer using…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-13 Nikolaos Nikolaou , Konstantinos Sechidis

The edge structure of the graph defining an undirected graphical model describes precisely the structure of dependence between the variables in the graph. In many applications, the dependence structure is unknown and it is desirable to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-08-01 Marina Vinyes , Guillaume Obozinski

Many real-world decision-making tasks require learning causal relationships between a set of variables. Traditional causal discovery methods, however, require that all variables are observed, which is often not feasible in practical…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-06-27 Raj Agrawal , Chandler Squires , Neha Prasad , Caroline Uhler

Learning concepts from natural high-dimensional data (e.g., images) holds potential in building human-aligned and interpretable machine learning models. Despite its encouraging prospect, formalization and theoretical insights into this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-16 Lingjing Kong , Guangyi Chen , Biwei Huang , Eric P. Xing , Yuejie Chi , Kun Zhang

We consider the problem of causal discovery (structure learning) from heterogeneous observational data. Most existing methods assume a homogeneous sampling scheme, which leads to misleading conclusions when violated in many applications. To…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-02-01 Fangting Zhou , Kejun He , Yang Ni