A Bayesian Approach to Learning

Causal networks

Unit 1

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 Objectives

• Showing that causal networks are different from a causal

ones

• Identification of circumstances in which methods for

learning acausal networks
are applicable to learning causal networks

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 A Causal Network is……

A directed acyclic graph where

Nodes correspond to chance variables in U
Non root node is a direct causal effect of its parents.

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 Causal Bayesian Networks and
Influence diagrams

A Causal Network :

b f

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 Some new terms :

• Unresponsiveness.
• Set decision
• Mapping variable

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 What is an Influence Diagram ?

A model for the domain U U D having a

structural component
probabilistic component

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An Example

^b b() ^f f()

b
f

s
^s s(b,f)

^m m m(s)

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 Building an Influence diagram

Steps involved :
• Add a node to the diagram corresponding to each variable
in U U D
• Order the variables so that the unresponsiveness to D
comes first.
• For each Xi do
Add a causal mechanism node
Make Xi a deterministic function of Ci U Xi(Ci)where
Ci is a causal mechanism node.
Finally Assess the dependencies among the variables that are unresponsive D.

Haimonti Dutta, Department Of Computer and

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Information Science
Influence diagrams in canonical forms

Conditions :
• Chance nodes descendents of D are decision nodes

• Descendents of decision nodes are deterministic nodes

Haimonti Dutta, Department Of Computer and

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Information Science
 Learning Influence diagrams

Observations :
Information arcs and predecessors of a utility node are not
learned

We learn only the relevance arc structure and the physical

probability

We also know the states of all the decision variables and

thus have a complete data for D in every case of the data
base.

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 Hence…

The problem of learning influence diagrams for the domain

UUD

reduces to

Learning acausal bayesian networks for

U UD where decision variables are interpreted as chance
variables

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 Learning Causal Networks

An example :
Decision to quit
smoking
x
do we get lung
cancer before
sixty?
y

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 The problem :

We cannot fully observe the

mapping variable y(x)

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 Mechanism Components

What are they?

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 Decomposition of the mapping
variable y(x)

x y(x=0) y(x=1)

ŷ
y

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 Component Independence

Assumption that the mechanism components are

independent.

y(x=0) Y(x=1)
x

ŷ
y

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 Another Problem

The problem : Dependent Mechanisms

A solution :Introduce additional domain variables in order

to render mechanisms independent

But….

We may not be able to observe the variables we introduce.

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Learning in a causal network reduces to learning of acausal network
when
• Mechanism Independence
• Component Independence and
• Parameter Independence

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Learning Causal Network structure

We can use prior network methodology to establish priors

for causal network learning provided the following holds:
• Mechanism independence
• Component independence
• Parameter independence
• Parameter modularity

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 Conclusion

Some important points of focus :

Mechanism Independence
Component Independence
Parameter Independence
Parameter Modularity

We use the above to learn causal networks from acausal

networks

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