Learning Structural Causal Models from Ordering: Identifiable Flow Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Le, Minh Khoa, Do, Kien, Tran, Truyen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Le, Minh Khoa
Do, Kien
Tran, Truyen
author_facet Le, Minh Khoa
Do, Kien
Tran, Truyen
contents In this study, we address causal inference when only observational data and a valid causal ordering from the causal graph are available. We introduce a set of flow models that can recover component-wise, invertible transformation of exogenous variables. Our flow-based methods offer flexible model design while maintaining causal consistency regardless of the number of discretization steps. We propose design improvements that enable simultaneous learning of all causal mechanisms and reduce abduction and prediction complexity to linear O(n) relative to the number of layers, independent of the number of causal variables. Empirically, we demonstrate that our method outperforms previous state-of-the-art approaches and delivers consistent performance across a wide range of structural causal models in answering observational, interventional, and counterfactual questions. Additionally, our method achieves a significant reduction in computational time compared to existing diffusion-based techniques, making it practical for large structural causal models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_09843
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning Structural Causal Models from Ordering: Identifiable Flow Models
Le, Minh Khoa
Do, Kien
Tran, Truyen
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
In this study, we address causal inference when only observational data and a valid causal ordering from the causal graph are available. We introduce a set of flow models that can recover component-wise, invertible transformation of exogenous variables. Our flow-based methods offer flexible model design while maintaining causal consistency regardless of the number of discretization steps. We propose design improvements that enable simultaneous learning of all causal mechanisms and reduce abduction and prediction complexity to linear O(n) relative to the number of layers, independent of the number of causal variables. Empirically, we demonstrate that our method outperforms previous state-of-the-art approaches and delivers consistent performance across a wide range of structural causal models in answering observational, interventional, and counterfactual questions. Additionally, our method achieves a significant reduction in computational time compared to existing diffusion-based techniques, making it practical for large structural causal models.
title Learning Structural Causal Models from Ordering: Identifiable Flow Models
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.09843