We propose a method to classify the causal relationship between two discrete variables given only the joint distribution of the variables, acknowledging that the method is subject to an inherent baseline error. We assume that the causal system is acyclicity, but we do allow for hidden common causes. Our algorithm presupposes that the probability distributions @math of a cause @math is independent from the probability distribution @math of the cause-effect mechanism. While our classifier is trained with a Bayesian assumption of flat hyperpriors, we do not make this assumption about our test data. This work connects to recent developments on the identifiability of causal models over continuous variables under the assumption of "independent mechanisms". Carefully-commented Python notebooks that reproduce all our experiments are available online at this http URL
Most of this work has focused on distinguishing the causal orientation in the absence of confounding (i.e. distinguishing hypotheses A, C and D in Fig. , although @cite_0 have extended the linear non-Gaussian methods to the general hypothesis space of Fig, and showed that the additive noise assumption can be used to detect pure confounding with some success, i.e. to distinguish hypothesis B from hypotheses C and D.
@cite_0
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Inferring the causal structure of a set of random variables from a finite sample of the joint distribution is an important problem in science. The case of two random variables is particularly challenging since no (conditional) independences can be exploited. Recent methods that are based on additive noise models suggest the following principle: Whenever the joint distribution P(X,Y) admits such a model in one direction, e.g., Y = f(X)+N, N ⊥X, but does not admit the reversed model X=g(Y)+N, N ⊥ Y, one infers the former direction to be causal (i.e., X → Y). Up to now, these approaches only dealt with continuous variables. In many situations, however, the variables of interest are discrete or even have only finitely many states. In this work, we extend the notion of additive noise models to these cases. We prove that it almost never occurs that additive noise models can be fit in both directions. We further propose an efficient algorithm that is able to perform this way of causal inference on finite samples of discrete variables. We show that the algorithm works on both synthetic and real data sets. The discovery of causal relationships from purely observational data is a fundamental problem in science. The most elementary form of such a causal discovery problem is to decide whether X causes Y or, alternatively, Y causes X, given joint observations of two variables X,Y. An example is to decide whether altitude causes temperature, or vice versa, given only joint measurements of both variables. Even under the simplifying assumptions of no confounding, no feedback loops, and no selection bias, such bivariate causal discovery problems are challenging. Nevertheless, several approaches for addressing those problems have been proposed in recent years. We review two families of such methods: methods based on Additive Noise Models (ANMs) and Information Geometric Causal Inference (IGCI). We present the benchmark CAUSEEFFECTPAIRS that consists of data for 100 different causee ffect pairs selected from 37 data sets from various domains (e.g., meteorology, biology, medicine, engineering, economy, etc.) and motivate our decisions regarding the "ground truth" causal directions of all pairs. We evaluate the performance of several bivariate causal discovery methods on these real-world benchmark data and in addition on artificially simulated data. Our empirical results on real-world data indicate that certain methods are indeed able to distinguish cause from effect using only purely observational data, although more benchmark data would be needed to obtain statistically significant conclusions. One of the best performing methods overall is the method based on Additive Noise Models that has originally been proposed by (2009), which obtains an accuracy of 63 ± 10 and an AUC of 0.74 ± 0.05 on the real-world benchmark. As the main theoretical contribution of this work we prove the consistency of that method. We consider the following detection problem: given a realization of a symmetric matrix X of dimension n, distinguish between the hypothesis that all upper triangular variables are i.i.d. Gaussians variables with mean 0 and variance 1 and the hypothesis that there is a planted principal submatrix B of dimension L for which all upper triangular variables are i.i.d. Gaussians with mean 1 and variance 1 , whereas all other upper triangular elements of X not in B are i.i.d. Gaussians variables with mean 0 and variance 1. We refer to this as the 'Gaussian hidden clique problem'. When L = (1 + ∊) √n (∊ > 0), it is possible to solve this detection problem with probability 1 - on(1) by computing the spectrum of X and considering the largest eigenvalue of X. We prove that when L < (1 - ∊) √n no algorithm that examines only the eigenvalues of X can detect the existence of a hidden Gaussian clique, with error probability vanishing as n → ∞. The result above is an immediate consequence of a more general result on rank-one perturbations of k-dimensional Gaussian tensors. In this context we establish a lower bound on the critical signal-to-noise ratio below which a rank-one signal cannot be detected. Inferring the causal structure of a set of random variables from a finite sample of the joint distribution is an important problem in science. Recently, methods using additive noise models have been suggested to approach the case of continuous variables. In many situations, however, the variables of interest are discrete or even have only finitely many states. In this work we extend the notion of additive noise models to these cases. Whenever the joint distribution P ) admits such a model in one direction, e.g. Y = f(X) + N, N ⊥ X, it does not admit the reversed model X = g(Y ) + N , N ⊥ Y as long as the model is chosen in a generic way. Based on these deliberations we propose an efficient new algorithm that is able to distinguish between cause and effect for a finite sample of discrete variables. We show that this algorithm works both on synthetic and real data sets.