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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Geiger, Bernhard C., Kern, Roman
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.01424
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author Geiger, Bernhard C.
Kern, Roman
author_facet Geiger, Bernhard C.
Kern, Roman
contents In this work, we investigate causal learning of independent causal mechanisms from a Bayesian perspective. Confirming previous claims from the literature, we show in a didactically accessible manner that unlabeled data (i.e., cause realizations) do not improve the estimation of the parameters defining the mechanism. Furthermore, we observe the importance of choosing an appropriate prior for the cause and mechanism parameters, respectively. Specifically, we show that a factorized prior results in a factorized posterior, which resonates with Janzing and Schölkopf's definition of independent causal mechanisms via the Kolmogorov complexity of the involved distributions and with the concept of parameter independence of Heckerman et al.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_01424
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Role of Priors in Bayesian Causal Learning
Geiger, Bernhard C.
Kern, Roman
Machine Learning
In this work, we investigate causal learning of independent causal mechanisms from a Bayesian perspective. Confirming previous claims from the literature, we show in a didactically accessible manner that unlabeled data (i.e., cause realizations) do not improve the estimation of the parameters defining the mechanism. Furthermore, we observe the importance of choosing an appropriate prior for the cause and mechanism parameters, respectively. Specifically, we show that a factorized prior results in a factorized posterior, which resonates with Janzing and Schölkopf's definition of independent causal mechanisms via the Kolmogorov complexity of the involved distributions and with the concept of parameter independence of Heckerman et al.
title On the Role of Priors in Bayesian Causal Learning
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.01424