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Main Authors: Harada, Kazuharu, Fujisawa, Hironori
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03077
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author Harada, Kazuharu
Fujisawa, Hironori
author_facet Harada, Kazuharu
Fujisawa, Hironori
contents We consider the problem of inferring the causal structure from observational data, especially when the structure is sparse. This type of problem is usually formulated as an inference of a directed acyclic graph (DAG) model. The linear non-Gaussian acyclic model (LiNGAM) is one of the most successful DAG models, and various estimation methods have been developed. However, existing methods are not efficient for some reasons: (i) the sparse structure is not always incorporated in causal order estimation, and (ii) the whole information of the data is not used in parameter estimation. To address {these issues}, we propose a new estimation method for a linear DAG model with non-Gaussian noises. The proposed method is based on the log-likelihood of independent component analysis (ICA) with two penalty terms related to the sparsity and the consistency condition. The proposed method enables us to estimate the causal order and the parameters simultaneously. For stable and efficient optimization, we propose some devices, such as a modified natural gradient. Numerical experiments show that the proposed method outperforms existing methods, including LiNGAM and NOTEARS.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2009_03077
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Estimation of Structural Causal Model via Sparsely Mixing Independent Component Analysis
Harada, Kazuharu
Fujisawa, Hironori
Machine Learning
We consider the problem of inferring the causal structure from observational data, especially when the structure is sparse. This type of problem is usually formulated as an inference of a directed acyclic graph (DAG) model. The linear non-Gaussian acyclic model (LiNGAM) is one of the most successful DAG models, and various estimation methods have been developed. However, existing methods are not efficient for some reasons: (i) the sparse structure is not always incorporated in causal order estimation, and (ii) the whole information of the data is not used in parameter estimation. To address {these issues}, we propose a new estimation method for a linear DAG model with non-Gaussian noises. The proposed method is based on the log-likelihood of independent component analysis (ICA) with two penalty terms related to the sparsity and the consistency condition. The proposed method enables us to estimate the causal order and the parameters simultaneously. For stable and efficient optimization, we propose some devices, such as a modified natural gradient. Numerical experiments show that the proposed method outperforms existing methods, including LiNGAM and NOTEARS.
title Estimation of Structural Causal Model via Sparsely Mixing Independent Component Analysis
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03077