Bayesian causal discovery: Posterior concentration and optimal detection

Abstract

We consider the problem of Bayesian causal discovery for the standard model of linear structural equations with equivariant Gaussian noise. A uniform prior is placed on the space of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) over a fixed set of variables and, given the graph, independent Gaussian priors are placed on the associated linear coefficients of pairwise interactions. We show that the rate at which the posterior on model space concentrates on the true underlying DAG depends critically on its nature: If it is maximal, in the sense that adding any one new edge would violate acyclicity, then its posterior probability converges to 1 exponentially fast (almost surely) in the sample size $n$. Otherwise, it converges at a rate no faster than $1/\sqrt{n}$. This sharp dichotomy is an instance of the important general phenomenon that avoiding overfitting is significantly harder than identifying all of the structure that is present in the model. We also draw a new connection between the posterior distribution on model space and recent results on optimal hypothesis testing in the related problem of edge detection. Our theoretical findings are illustrated empirically through simulation experiments.