Learning Causal Bayesian Networks from Incomplete Observational Data and Interventions

2007 ◽  
pp. 17-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanen Borchani ◽  
Maher Chaouachi ◽  
Nahla Ben Amor
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Networks ◽  
Observational Data ◽  
Causal Bayesian Networks

scholarly journals Provable Guarantees on the Robustness of Decision Rules to Causal Interventions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjie Wang ◽  
Clare Lyle ◽  
Marta Kwiatkowska
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Bayesian Networks ◽  
Lower Bounds ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Upper And Lower Bounds ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Data Generating Process ◽  
Causal Bayesian Networks ◽  
Novel Model

Robustness of decision rules to shifts in the data-generating process is crucial to the successful deployment of decision-making systems. Such shifts can be viewed as interventions on a causal graph, which capture (possibly hypothetical) changes in the data-generating process, whether due to natural reasons or by the action of an adversary. We consider causal Bayesian networks and formally define the interventional robustness problem, a novel model-based notion of robustness for decision functions that measures worst-case performance with respect to a set of interventions that denote changes to parameters and/or causal influences. By relying on a tractable representation of Bayesian networks as arithmetic circuits, we provide efficient algorithms for computing guaranteed upper and lower bounds on the interventional robustness probabilities. Experimental results demonstrate that the methods yield useful and interpretable bounds for a range of practical networks, paving the way towards provably causally robust decision-making systems.

scholarly journals Causal Datasheet for Datasets: An Evaluation Guide for Real-World Data Analysis and Data Collection Design Using Bayesian Networks

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Butcher ◽  
Vincent S. Huang ◽  
Christopher Robinson ◽  
Jeremy Reffin ◽  
Sema K. Sgaier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Bayesian Networks ◽  
Sample Size ◽  
Observational Data ◽  
Real World ◽  
Structure Learning ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Real World Data ◽  
Real World Datasets

Developing data-driven solutions that address real-world problems requires understanding of these problems’ causes and how their interaction affects the outcome–often with only observational data. Causal Bayesian Networks (BN) have been proposed as a powerful method for discovering and representing the causal relationships from observational data as a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). BNs could be especially useful for research in global health in Lower and Middle Income Countries, where there is an increasing abundance of observational data that could be harnessed for policy making, program evaluation, and intervention design. However, BNs have not been widely adopted by global health professionals, and in real-world applications, confidence in the results of BNs generally remains inadequate. This is partially due to the inability to validate against some ground truth, as the true DAG is not available. This is especially problematic if a learned DAG conflicts with pre-existing domain doctrine. Here we conceptualize and demonstrate an idea of a “Causal Datasheet” that could approximate and document BN performance expectations for a given dataset, aiming to provide confidence and sample size requirements to practitioners. To generate results for such a Causal Datasheet, a tool was developed which can generate synthetic Bayesian networks and their associated synthetic datasets to mimic real-world datasets. The results given by well-known structure learning algorithms and a novel implementation of the OrderMCMC method using the Quotient Normalized Maximum Likelihood score were recorded. These results were used to populate the Causal Datasheet, and recommendations could be made dependent on whether expected performance met user-defined thresholds. We present our experience in the creation of Causal Datasheets to aid analysis decisions at different stages of the research process. First, one was deployed to help determine the appropriate sample size of a planned study of sexual and reproductive health in Madhya Pradesh, India. Second, a datasheet was created to estimate the performance of an existing maternal health survey we conducted in Uttar Pradesh, India. Third, we validated generated performance estimates and investigated current limitations on the well-known ALARM dataset. Our experience demonstrates the utility of the Causal Datasheet, which can help global health practitioners gain more confidence when applying BNs.

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