Bivariate Causal Discovery using Bayesian Model Selection

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Dhir, Anish, Power, Samuel, van der Wilk, Mark
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author Dhir, Anish
Power, Samuel
van der Wilk, Mark
author_facet Dhir, Anish
Power, Samuel
van der Wilk, Mark
contents Much of the causal discovery literature prioritises guaranteeing the identifiability of causal direction in statistical models. For structures within a Markov equivalence class, this requires strong assumptions which may not hold in real-world datasets, ultimately limiting the usability of these methods. Building on previous attempts, we show how to incorporate causal assumptions within the Bayesian framework. Identifying causal direction then becomes a Bayesian model selection problem. This enables us to construct models with realistic assumptions, and consequently allows for the differentiation between Markov equivalent causal structures. We analyse why Bayesian model selection works in situations where methods based on maximum likelihood fail. To demonstrate our approach, we construct a Bayesian non-parametric model that can flexibly model the joint distribution. We then outperform previous methods on a wide range of benchmark datasets with varying data generating assumptions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_02931
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bivariate Causal Discovery using Bayesian Model Selection
Dhir, Anish
Power, Samuel
van der Wilk, Mark
Machine Learning
Much of the causal discovery literature prioritises guaranteeing the identifiability of causal direction in statistical models. For structures within a Markov equivalence class, this requires strong assumptions which may not hold in real-world datasets, ultimately limiting the usability of these methods. Building on previous attempts, we show how to incorporate causal assumptions within the Bayesian framework. Identifying causal direction then becomes a Bayesian model selection problem. This enables us to construct models with realistic assumptions, and consequently allows for the differentiation between Markov equivalent causal structures. We analyse why Bayesian model selection works in situations where methods based on maximum likelihood fail. To demonstrate our approach, we construct a Bayesian non-parametric model that can flexibly model the joint distribution. We then outperform previous methods on a wide range of benchmark datasets with varying data generating assumptions.
title Bivariate Causal Discovery using Bayesian Model Selection
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.02931