Faithfulness of Probability Distributions and Graphs

Kayvan Sadeghi

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arXiv · 1701.08366

Faithfulness of Probability Distributions and Graphs

Kayvan Sadeghi

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Abstract

A main question in graphical models and causal inference is whether, given a probability distribution $P$ (which is usually an underlying distribution of data), there is a graph (or graphs) to which $P$ is faithful. The main goal of this paper is to provide a theoretical answer to this problem. We work with general independence models, which contain probabilistic independence models as a special case. We exploit a generalization of ordering, called preordering, of the nodes of (mixed) graphs. This allows us to provide sufficient conditions for a given independence model to be Markov to a graph with the minimum possible number of edges, and more importantly, necessary and sufficient conditions for a given probability distribution to be faithful to a graph. We present our results for the general case of mixed graphs, but specialize the definitions and results to the better-known subclasses of undirected (concentration) and bidirected (covariance) graphs as well as directed acyclic graphs.

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Kayvan Sadeghi. 2017-01-29. Faithfulness of Probability Distributions and Graphs. https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.08366

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