A Statistic Criterion for Reducing Indeterminacy in Linear Causal Modeling

摘要

Inferring causal relationships from observational data is still an open challenge in machine learning. State-of-the-art approaches often rely on constraint-based algorithms which detect v-structures in triplets of nodes in order to orient arcs. These algorithms are destined to fail when confronted with completely connected triplets. This paper proposes a criterion to deal with arc orientation also in presence of completely linearly connected triplets. This criterion is then used in a Relevance-Causal (RC) algorithm, which combines the original causal criterion with a relevance measure, to infer causal dependencies from observational data. A set of simulated experiments on the inference of the causal structure of linear networks shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach.