Causal Inference on Discrete Data via Estimating Distance Correlations

DOI10.1162/NECO_A_00820zbMATH Open1472.62044arXiv1803.07712OpenAlexW3124338716WikidataQ31047553 ScholiaQ31047553MaRDI QIDQ5380419FDOQ5380419

Authors: Furui Liu, Lai Wan Chan 

Publication date: 4 June 2019

Published in: Neural Computation (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In this paper, we deal with the problem of inferring causal directions when the data is on discrete domain. By considering the distribution of the cause $P(X)$ and the conditional distribution mapping cause to effect $P(Y|X)$ as independent random variables, we propose to infer the causal direction via comparing the distance correlation between $P(X)$ and $P(Y|X)$ with the distance correlation between $P(Y)$ and $P(X|Y)$. We infer "$X$ causes $Y$" if the dependence coefficient between $P(X)$ and $P(Y|X)$ is smaller. Experiments are performed to show the performance of the proposed method.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.07712

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Nonparametric estimation (62G05)

Cites Work

• Causation, prediction, and search
• Measuring and testing dependence by correlation of distances
• Estimation of a structural vector autoregression model using non-Gaussianity
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Semi-supervised learning in causal and anticausal settings
• A linear non-Gaussian acyclic model for causal discovery
• Kernel methods for measuring independence
• DirectLiNGAM: a direct method for learning a linear non-Gaussian structural equation model
• Information-geometric approach to inferring causal directions
• Causal Inference Using the Algorithmic Markov Condition
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Pairwise likelihood ratios for estimation of non-Gaussian structural equation models
• Causal Discovery via Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space Embeddings

Cited In (3)

• On inference of causality for discrete state models in a multiscale context
• Predicting Cause-Effect Relationships from Incomplete Discrete Observations
• Confounder detection in high-dimensional linear models using first moments of spectral measures

Uses Software

• TETRAD
• DirectLiNGAM

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