QWO: Speeding Up Permutation-Based Causal Discovery in LiGAMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Shahverdikondori, Mohammad, Mokhtarian, Ehsan, Kiyavash, Negar
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Shahverdikondori, Mohammad
Mokhtarian, Ehsan
Kiyavash, Negar
author_facet Shahverdikondori, Mohammad
Mokhtarian, Ehsan
Kiyavash, Negar
contents Causal discovery is essential for understanding relationships among variables of interest in many scientific domains. In this paper, we focus on permutation-based methods for learning causal graphs in Linear Gaussian Acyclic Models (LiGAMs), where the permutation encodes a causal ordering of the variables. Existing methods in this setting are not scalable due to their high computational complexity. These methods are comprised of two main components: (i) constructing a specific DAG, $\mathcal{G}^π$, for a given permutation $π$, which represents the best structure that can be learned from the available data while adhering to $π$, and (ii) searching over the space of permutations (i.e., causal orders) to minimize the number of edges in $\mathcal{G}^π$. We introduce QWO, a novel approach that significantly enhances the efficiency of computing $\mathcal{G}^π$ for a given permutation $π$. QWO has a speed-up of $O(n^2)$ ($n$ is the number of variables) compared to the state-of-the-art BIC-based method, making it highly scalable. We show that our method is theoretically sound and can be integrated into existing search strategies such as GRASP and hill-climbing-based methods to improve their performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_23155
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle QWO: Speeding Up Permutation-Based Causal Discovery in LiGAMs
Shahverdikondori, Mohammad
Mokhtarian, Ehsan
Kiyavash, Negar
Machine Learning
Methodology
Causal discovery is essential for understanding relationships among variables of interest in many scientific domains. In this paper, we focus on permutation-based methods for learning causal graphs in Linear Gaussian Acyclic Models (LiGAMs), where the permutation encodes a causal ordering of the variables. Existing methods in this setting are not scalable due to their high computational complexity. These methods are comprised of two main components: (i) constructing a specific DAG, $\mathcal{G}^π$, for a given permutation $π$, which represents the best structure that can be learned from the available data while adhering to $π$, and (ii) searching over the space of permutations (i.e., causal orders) to minimize the number of edges in $\mathcal{G}^π$. We introduce QWO, a novel approach that significantly enhances the efficiency of computing $\mathcal{G}^π$ for a given permutation $π$. QWO has a speed-up of $O(n^2)$ ($n$ is the number of variables) compared to the state-of-the-art BIC-based method, making it highly scalable. We show that our method is theoretically sound and can be integrated into existing search strategies such as GRASP and hill-climbing-based methods to improve their performance.
title QWO: Speeding Up Permutation-Based Causal Discovery in LiGAMs
topic Machine Learning
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.23155