Causal Network Discovery from Interventional Count Data with Latent Linear DAGs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Zhang, Yijiao, Li, Hongzhe
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Zhang, Yijiao
Li, Hongzhe
author_facet Zhang, Yijiao
Li, Hongzhe
contents The increasing availability of interventional data offers new opportunities for causal discovery, with gene perturbation studies providing a prominent example. Such data are typically count-valued and subject to substantial measurement error arising from technical variability and latent state heterogeneity. Motivated by these challenges, we study identification and estimation in latent linear structural causal models for interventional count data. We propose a latent linear Gaussian directed acyclic graph (DAG) model with Poisson measurement error that explicitly separates the latent causal structure from the observed counts. Under a mean-shift intervention design, we establish population-level identifiability of the latent causal DAG. Building on these identification results, we develop an estimation procedure based on sparse inverse matrix estimation and provide theoretical guarantees on estimation error and finite-sample causal discovery. Simulation studies and applications to Perturb-seq data demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the proposed method.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_25838
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Causal Network Discovery from Interventional Count Data with Latent Linear DAGs
Zhang, Yijiao
Li, Hongzhe
Methodology
The increasing availability of interventional data offers new opportunities for causal discovery, with gene perturbation studies providing a prominent example. Such data are typically count-valued and subject to substantial measurement error arising from technical variability and latent state heterogeneity. Motivated by these challenges, we study identification and estimation in latent linear structural causal models for interventional count data. We propose a latent linear Gaussian directed acyclic graph (DAG) model with Poisson measurement error that explicitly separates the latent causal structure from the observed counts. Under a mean-shift intervention design, we establish population-level identifiability of the latent causal DAG. Building on these identification results, we develop an estimation procedure based on sparse inverse matrix estimation and provide theoretical guarantees on estimation error and finite-sample causal discovery. Simulation studies and applications to Perturb-seq data demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the proposed method.
title Causal Network Discovery from Interventional Count Data with Latent Linear DAGs
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25838