Identifying Causal Effects via Context-specific Independence Relations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tikka, Santtu, Hyttinen, Antti, Karvanen, Juha
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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author Tikka, Santtu
Hyttinen, Antti
Karvanen, Juha
author_facet Tikka, Santtu
Hyttinen, Antti
Karvanen, Juha
contents Causal effect identification considers whether an interventional probability distribution can be uniquely determined from a passively observed distribution in a given causal structure. If the generating system induces context-specific independence (CSI) relations, the existing identification procedures and criteria based on do-calculus are inherently incomplete. We show that deciding causal effect non-identifiability is NP-hard in the presence of CSIs. Motivated by this, we design a calculus and an automated search procedure for identifying causal effects in the presence of CSIs. The approach is provably sound and it includes standard do-calculus as a special case. With the approach we can obtain identifying formulas that were unobtainable previously, and demonstrate that a small number of CSI-relations may be sufficient to turn a previously non-identifiable instance to identifiable.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2009_09768
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Identifying Causal Effects via Context-specific Independence Relations
Tikka, Santtu
Hyttinen, Antti
Karvanen, Juha
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Causal effect identification considers whether an interventional probability distribution can be uniquely determined from a passively observed distribution in a given causal structure. If the generating system induces context-specific independence (CSI) relations, the existing identification procedures and criteria based on do-calculus are inherently incomplete. We show that deciding causal effect non-identifiability is NP-hard in the presence of CSIs. Motivated by this, we design a calculus and an automated search procedure for identifying causal effects in the presence of CSIs. The approach is provably sound and it includes standard do-calculus as a special case. With the approach we can obtain identifying formulas that were unobtainable previously, and demonstrate that a small number of CSI-relations may be sufficient to turn a previously non-identifiable instance to identifiable.
title Identifying Causal Effects via Context-specific Independence Relations
topic Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.09768