Testing Multivariate Conditional Independence Using Exchangeable Sampling and Sufficient Statistics

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lin, Xiaotong, Xie, Jie, Tian, Fangqiao, Huang, Dongming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913785827033088
author Lin, Xiaotong
Xie, Jie
Tian, Fangqiao
Huang, Dongming
author_facet Lin, Xiaotong
Xie, Jie
Tian, Fangqiao
Huang, Dongming
contents We consider testing multivariate conditional independence between a response Y and a covariate vector X given additional variables Z. We introduce the Multivariate Sufficient Statistic Conditional Randomization Test (MS-CRT), which generates exchangeable copies of X by conditioning on sufficient statistics of P(X|Z). MS-CRT requires no modelling assumption on Y and accommodates any test statistics, including those derived from complex predictive models. It relaxes the assumptions of standard conditional randomization tests by allowing more unknown parameters in P(X|Z) than the sample size. MS-CRT avoids multiplicity corrections and effectively detects joint signals, even when individual components of X have only weak effects on Y . Our method extends to group selection with false discovery rate control. We develop efficient implementations for two important cases where P(X,Z) is either multivariate normal or belongs to a graphical model. For normal models, we establish the minimax rate optimality. For graphical models, we demonstrate the superior performance of our method compared to existing methods through comprehensive simulations and real-data examples.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_06685
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Testing Multivariate Conditional Independence Using Exchangeable Sampling and Sufficient Statistics
Lin, Xiaotong
Xie, Jie
Tian, Fangqiao
Huang, Dongming
Methodology
We consider testing multivariate conditional independence between a response Y and a covariate vector X given additional variables Z. We introduce the Multivariate Sufficient Statistic Conditional Randomization Test (MS-CRT), which generates exchangeable copies of X by conditioning on sufficient statistics of P(X|Z). MS-CRT requires no modelling assumption on Y and accommodates any test statistics, including those derived from complex predictive models. It relaxes the assumptions of standard conditional randomization tests by allowing more unknown parameters in P(X|Z) than the sample size. MS-CRT avoids multiplicity corrections and effectively detects joint signals, even when individual components of X have only weak effects on Y . Our method extends to group selection with false discovery rate control. We develop efficient implementations for two important cases where P(X,Z) is either multivariate normal or belongs to a graphical model. For normal models, we establish the minimax rate optimality. For graphical models, we demonstrate the superior performance of our method compared to existing methods through comprehensive simulations and real-data examples.
title Testing Multivariate Conditional Independence Using Exchangeable Sampling and Sufficient Statistics
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06685