The presence of deterministic relations pose problems for current algorithms that learn the causal structure of a system based on the observed conditional independencies. Deterministic variables lead to information equivalences; two sets of variables have the same information about a third variable. Based on information content, one cannot decide on the direct causes. Several edges model equally well the dependencies. We call them equivalent edges. We propose to select among the equivalent edges the one with the simplest descriptive complexity. This approach assumes that the descriptive complexity increases along a causal path. As confirmed by our experimental results, the accuracy of the method depends on the chance of accidental matches of complexities.
Lemeire, J, Meganck, S, Cartella, F, Liu, T & Statnikov, A 2011, Inferring the Causal Decomposition under the Presence of Deterministic Relations. in Special session Learning of causal relations at the 18th European Symposium On Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning Bruges (Belgium). ESANN proceedings, ESANN, pp. 1-6, Unknown, 30/04/11. <http://parallel.vub.ac.be/~jan>
Lemeire, J., Meganck, S., Cartella, F., Liu, T., & Statnikov, A. (2011). Inferring the Causal Decomposition under the Presence of Deterministic Relations. In Special session Learning of causal relations at the 18th European Symposium On Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning Bruges (Belgium) (pp. 1-6). (ESANN proceedings). ESANN. http://parallel.vub.ac.be/~jan
@inproceedings{09293e5c233a430abd5fa5ce5d7c23bc,
title = "Inferring the Causal Decomposition under the Presence of Deterministic Relations",
abstract = "The presence of deterministic relations pose problems for current algorithms that learn the causal structure of a system based on the observed conditional independencies. Deterministic variables lead to information equivalences; two sets of variables have the same information about a third variable. Based on information content, one cannot decide on the direct causes. Several edges model equally well the dependencies. We call them equivalent edges. We propose to select among the equivalent edges the one with the simplest descriptive complexity. This approach assumes that the descriptive complexity increases along a causal path. As confirmed by our experimental results, the accuracy of the method depends on the chance of accidental matches of complexities.",
keywords = "causality, deterministic relations",
author = "Jan Lemeire and Stijn Meganck and Francesco Cartella and Tingting Liu and Alexander Statnikov",
year = "2011",
month = apr,
day = "30",
language = "English",
isbn = "978-2-87419-044-5",
series = "ESANN proceedings",
publisher = "ESANN",
pages = "1--6",
booktitle = "Special session Learning of causal relations at the 18th European Symposium On Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning Bruges (Belgium)",
note = "Unknown ; Conference date: 30-04-2011",
}