VCDF: A Validated Consensus-Driven Framework for Time Series Causal Discovery

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Yu, Gene, Guo, Ce, Luk, Wayne
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Yu, Gene
Guo, Ce
Luk, Wayne
author_facet Yu, Gene
Guo, Ce
Luk, Wayne
contents Time series causal discovery is essential for understanding dynamic systems, yet many existing methods remain sensitive to noise, non-stationarity, and sampling variability. We propose the Validated Consensus-Driven Framework (VCDF), a simple and method-agnostic layer that improves robustness by evaluating the stability of causal relations across blocked temporal subsets. VCDF requires no modification to base algorithms and can be applied to methods such as VAR-LiNGAM and PCMCI. Experiments on synthetic datasets show that VCDF improves VAR-LiNGAM by approximately 0.08-0.12 in both window and summary F1 scores across diverse data characteristics, with gains most pronounced for moderate-to-long sequences. The framework also benefits from longer sequences, yielding up to 0.18 absolute improvement on time series of length 1000 and above. Evaluations on simulated fMRI data and IT-monitoring scenarios further demonstrate enhanced stability and structural accuracy under realistic noise conditions. VCDF provides an effective reliability layer for time series causal discovery without altering underlying modeling assumptions.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_21381
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle VCDF: A Validated Consensus-Driven Framework for Time Series Causal Discovery
Yu, Gene
Guo, Ce
Luk, Wayne
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Time series causal discovery is essential for understanding dynamic systems, yet many existing methods remain sensitive to noise, non-stationarity, and sampling variability. We propose the Validated Consensus-Driven Framework (VCDF), a simple and method-agnostic layer that improves robustness by evaluating the stability of causal relations across blocked temporal subsets. VCDF requires no modification to base algorithms and can be applied to methods such as VAR-LiNGAM and PCMCI. Experiments on synthetic datasets show that VCDF improves VAR-LiNGAM by approximately 0.08-0.12 in both window and summary F1 scores across diverse data characteristics, with gains most pronounced for moderate-to-long sequences. The framework also benefits from longer sequences, yielding up to 0.18 absolute improvement on time series of length 1000 and above. Evaluations on simulated fMRI data and IT-monitoring scenarios further demonstrate enhanced stability and structural accuracy under realistic noise conditions. VCDF provides an effective reliability layer for time series causal discovery without altering underlying modeling assumptions.
title VCDF: A Validated Consensus-Driven Framework for Time Series Causal Discovery
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21381