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arXiv 1702.06385stat.MLcs.LG
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多元混合型数据的因果推断

Causal Inference on Multivariate and Mixed-Type Data

Max Planck Institute for Informatics(马克斯·普朗克信息学研究所);Saarland University(萨尔大学)

Alexander Marx, Jilles Vreeken

摘要:

给定两个随机变量$X$和$Y$的联合分布上的数据,我们考虑了在$X$和$Y$之间推断最可能因果方向的问题。特别是,我们考虑一般情况下,其中$X$和$Y$可以是单变量或多变量,以及相同或混合的数据类型。我们采取信息理论的方法,基于Kolmogorov复杂性,由此得出,首先描述的数据的原因,然后的效果给定的原因是短于相反的方向。理想的分数是不可计算的,但可以通过最小描述长度(MDL)原则来近似。基于MDL,我们提出了两个分数,一个用于当$X$和$Y$都是相同的单一数据类型时,一个用于当它们是混合类型时。我们使用分类和回归树对$X$和$Y$之间的依赖关系进行建模。由于推断最优模型是NP难的,我们提出了Crack,一个快速贪婪算法,直接从数据中确定最可能的因果方向。对各种数据的实证评估表明,Crack可靠且准确度高,可以在单变量和多变量因果对上推断出正确的因果方向。

英文摘要:

Given data over the joint distribution of two random variables $X$ and $Y$, we consider the problem of inferring the most likely causal direction between $X$ and $Y$. In particular, we consider the general case where both $X$ and $Y$ may be univariate or multivariate, and of the same or mixed data types. We take an information theoretic approach, based on Kolmogorov complexity, from which it follows that first describing the data over cause and then that of effect given cause is shorter than the reverse direction. The ideal score is not computable, but can be approximated through the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle. Based on MDL, we propose two scores, one for when both $X$ and $Y$ are of the same single data type, and one for when they are mixed-type. We model dependencies between $X$ and $Y$ using classification and regression trees. As inferring the optimal model is NP-hard, we propose Crack, a fast greedy algorithm to determine the most likely causal direction directly from the data. Empirical evaluation on a wide range of data shows that Crack reliably, and with high accuracy, infers the correct causal direction on both univariate and multivariate cause-effect pairs over both single and mixed-type data.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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