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We formulate a general framework for building structural causal models (SCMs) with deep learning components. The proposed approach employs normalising flows and variational inference to enable tractable inference of exogenous noise…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-26 Nick Pawlowski , Daniel C. Castro , Ben Glocker

This paper investigates the problem of bounding counterfactual queries from an arbitrary collection of observational and experimental distributions and qualitative knowledge about the underlying data-generating model represented in the form…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-10-13 Junzhe Zhang , Jin Tian , Elias Bareinboim

Many researchers have voiced their support towards Pearl's counterfactual theory of causation as a stepping stone for AI/ML research's ultimate goal of intelligent systems. As in any other growing subfield, patience seems to be a virtue…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-12-27 Matej Zečević , Moritz Willig , Devendra Singh Dhami , Kristian Kersting

Reasoning about the effect of interventions and counterfactuals is a fundamental task found throughout the data sciences. A collection of principles, algorithms, and tools has been developed for performing such tasks in the last decades…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-08 Tara V. Anand , Adèle H. Ribeiro , Jin Tian , Elias Bareinboim

Causal discovery, the problem of inferring the direction of causality, is generally ill-posed. We use the language of structural causal models (SCM) to show that assuming that the causal relations are acyclic and invariant across multiple…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-14 Francesco Montagna , Francesco Locatello

Inferring the causal direction and causal effect between two discrete random variables X and Y from a finite sample is often a crucial problem and a challenging task. However, if we have access to observational and interventional data, it…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-16 Peter Gmeiner

Causal-discovery algorithms return a directed graph, yet provide no principled means of distinguishing edge directions identified by the data from those assigned without an identifying assumption. Under the standard Markov and faithfulness…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-28 Eichi Uehara

Causal discovery, the task of automatically constructing a causal model from data, is of major significance across the sciences. Evaluating the performance of causal discovery algorithms should ideally involve comparing the inferred models…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-08-26 Maxime Peyrard , Robert West

In distributed systems where strong consistency is costly when not impossible, causal consistency provides a valuable abstraction to represent program executions as partial orders. In addition to the sequential program order of each…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2016-03-15 Matthieu Perrin , Achour Mostefaoui , Claude Jard

We study the problem of efficiently estimating the effect of an intervention on a single variable (atomic interventions) using observational samples in a causal Bayesian network. Our goal is to give algorithms that are efficient in both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-07 Arnab Bhattacharyya , Sutanu Gayen , Saravanan Kandasamy , Ashwin Maran , N. V. Vinodchandran

We study two problems related to recovering causal graphs from interventional data: (i) $\textit{verification}$, where the task is to check if a purported causal graph is correct, and (ii) $\textit{search}$, where the task is to recover the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-11 Davin Choo , Kirankumar Shiragur , Arnab Bhattacharyya

The capacity to address counterfactual "what if" inquiries is crucial for understanding and making use of causal influences. Traditional counterfactual inference, under Pearls' counterfactual framework, typically depends on having access to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-29 Shaoan Xie , Biwei Huang , Bin Gu , Tongliang Liu , Kun Zhang

We consider the problem of efficiently inferring interventional distributions in a causal Bayesian network from a finite number of observations. Let $\mathcal{P}$ be a causal model on a set $\mathbf{V}$ of observable variables on a given…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-07-28 Arnab Bhattacharyya , Sutanu Gayen , Saravanan Kandasamy , Vedant Raval , N. V. Vinodchandran

We derive confidence intervals and confidence sequences for causal effects in situations where the back-door or front-door criteria are applicable. Our tightest confidence intervals hold in the standard setting where the training data…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-05-26 Vladimir Vovk , Ruodu Wang

For two causal structures with the same set of visible variables, one is said to observationally dominate the other if the set of distributions over the visible variables realizable by the first contains the set of distributions over the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-24 Marina Maciel Ansanelli , Elie Wolfe , Robert W. Spekkens

This paper is concerned with graphical criteria that can be used to solve the problem of identifying casual effects from nonexperimental data in a causal Bayesian network structure, i.e., a directed acyclic graph that represents causal…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-07-02 Yimin Huang , Marco Valtorta

Counterfactual reasoning -- envisioning hypothetical scenarios, or possible worlds, where some circumstances are different from what (f)actually occurred (counter-to-fact) -- is ubiquitous in human cognition. Conventionally,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-05-31 Julius von Kügelgen , Abdirisak Mohamed , Sander Beckers

We study the computational complexity of counterfactual reasoning in relation to the complexity of associational and interventional reasoning on structural causal models (SCMs). We show that counterfactual reasoning is no harder than…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-05-22 Yunqiu Han , Yizuo Chen , Adnan Darwiche

Distinguishing correlation from causation is a central challenge in machine intelligence, and Pearl's $\mathcal{DO}$-calculus provides a rigorous symbolic framework for reasoning about interventions. A complementary question is whether such…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-03-03 Pilsung Kang

Causal discovery from observational data is an important tool in many branches of science. Under certain assumptions it allows scientists to explain phenomena, predict, and make decisions. In the large sample limit, sound and complete…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-07-13 Shami Nisimov , Yaniv Gurwicz , Raanan Y. Rohekar , Gal Novik