$\texttt{causalAssembly}$: Generating Realistic Production Data for Benchmarking Causal Discovery

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Göbler, Konstantin, Windisch, Tobias, Drton, Mathias, Pychynski, Tim, Sonntag, Steffen, Roth, Martin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Göbler, Konstantin
Windisch, Tobias
Drton, Mathias
Pychynski, Tim
Sonntag, Steffen
Roth, Martin
author_facet Göbler, Konstantin
Windisch, Tobias
Drton, Mathias
Pychynski, Tim
Sonntag, Steffen
Roth, Martin
contents Algorithms for causal discovery have recently undergone rapid advances and increasingly draw on flexible nonparametric methods to process complex data. With these advances comes a need for adequate empirical validation of the causal relationships learned by different algorithms. However, for most real data sources true causal relations remain unknown. This issue is further compounded by privacy concerns surrounding the release of suitable high-quality data. To help address these challenges, we gather a complex dataset comprising measurements from an assembly line in a manufacturing context. This line consists of numerous physical processes for which we are able to provide ground truth causal relationships on the basis of a detailed study of the underlying physics. We use the assembly line data and associated ground truth information to build a system for generation of semisynthetic manufacturing data that supports benchmarking of causal discovery methods. To accomplish this, we employ distributional random forests in order to flexibly estimate and represent conditional distributions that may be combined into joint distributions that strictly adhere to a causal model over the observed variables. The estimated conditionals and tools for data generation are made available in our Python library $\texttt{causalAssembly}$. Using the library, we showcase how to benchmark several well-known causal discovery algorithms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_10816
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle $\texttt{causalAssembly}$: Generating Realistic Production Data for Benchmarking Causal Discovery
Göbler, Konstantin
Windisch, Tobias
Drton, Mathias
Pychynski, Tim
Sonntag, Steffen
Roth, Martin
Machine Learning
Methodology
Algorithms for causal discovery have recently undergone rapid advances and increasingly draw on flexible nonparametric methods to process complex data. With these advances comes a need for adequate empirical validation of the causal relationships learned by different algorithms. However, for most real data sources true causal relations remain unknown. This issue is further compounded by privacy concerns surrounding the release of suitable high-quality data. To help address these challenges, we gather a complex dataset comprising measurements from an assembly line in a manufacturing context. This line consists of numerous physical processes for which we are able to provide ground truth causal relationships on the basis of a detailed study of the underlying physics. We use the assembly line data and associated ground truth information to build a system for generation of semisynthetic manufacturing data that supports benchmarking of causal discovery methods. To accomplish this, we employ distributional random forests in order to flexibly estimate and represent conditional distributions that may be combined into joint distributions that strictly adhere to a causal model over the observed variables. The estimated conditionals and tools for data generation are made available in our Python library $\texttt{causalAssembly}$. Using the library, we showcase how to benchmark several well-known causal discovery algorithms.
title $\texttt{causalAssembly}$: Generating Realistic Production Data for Benchmarking Causal Discovery
topic Machine Learning
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.10816