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Main Authors: Zhao, Boxin, Wang, Weishi, Zhu, Dingyuan, Liu, Ziqi, Wang, Dong, Zhang, Zhiqiang, Zhou, Jun, Kolar, Mladen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.06829
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author Zhao, Boxin
Wang, Weishi
Zhu, Dingyuan
Liu, Ziqi
Wang, Dong
Zhang, Zhiqiang
Zhou, Jun
Kolar, Mladen
author_facet Zhao, Boxin
Wang, Weishi
Zhu, Dingyuan
Liu, Ziqi
Wang, Dong
Zhang, Zhiqiang
Zhou, Jun
Kolar, Mladen
contents The causal dependence in data is often characterized by Directed Acyclic Graphical (DAG) models, widely used in many areas. Causal discovery aims to recover the DAG structure using observational data. This paper focuses on causal discovery with multi-variate count data. We are motivated by real-world web visit data, recording individual user visits to multiple websites. Building a causal diagram can help understand user behavior in transitioning between websites, inspiring operational strategy. A challenge in modeling is user heterogeneity, as users with different backgrounds exhibit varied behaviors. Additionally, social network connections can result in similar behaviors among friends. We introduce personalized Binomial DAG models to address heterogeneity and network dependency between observations, which are common in real-world applications. To learn the proposed DAG model, we develop an algorithm that embeds the network structure into a dimension-reduced covariate, learns each node's neighborhood to reduce the DAG search space, and explores the variance-mean relation to determine the ordering. Simulations show our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art competitors in heterogeneous data. We demonstrate its practical usefulness on a real-world web visit dataset.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_06829
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Personalized Binomial DAGs Learning with Network Structured Covariates
Zhao, Boxin
Wang, Weishi
Zhu, Dingyuan
Liu, Ziqi
Wang, Dong
Zhang, Zhiqiang
Zhou, Jun
Kolar, Mladen
Machine Learning
The causal dependence in data is often characterized by Directed Acyclic Graphical (DAG) models, widely used in many areas. Causal discovery aims to recover the DAG structure using observational data. This paper focuses on causal discovery with multi-variate count data. We are motivated by real-world web visit data, recording individual user visits to multiple websites. Building a causal diagram can help understand user behavior in transitioning between websites, inspiring operational strategy. A challenge in modeling is user heterogeneity, as users with different backgrounds exhibit varied behaviors. Additionally, social network connections can result in similar behaviors among friends. We introduce personalized Binomial DAG models to address heterogeneity and network dependency between observations, which are common in real-world applications. To learn the proposed DAG model, we develop an algorithm that embeds the network structure into a dimension-reduced covariate, learns each node's neighborhood to reduce the DAG search space, and explores the variance-mean relation to determine the ordering. Simulations show our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art competitors in heterogeneous data. We demonstrate its practical usefulness on a real-world web visit dataset.
title Personalized Binomial DAGs Learning with Network Structured Covariates
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.06829