Error probabilities for inference of causal directions

Jiji Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A main message from the causal modelling literature in the last several decades is that under some plausible assumptions, there can be statistically consistent procedures for inferring (features of) the causal structure of a set of random variables from observational data. But whether we can control the error probabilities with a finite sample size depends on the kind of consistency the procedures can achieve. It has been shown that in general, under the standard causal Markov and Faithfulness assumptions, the procedures can only be pointwise but not uniformly consistent without substantial background knowledge. This implies the impossibility of choosing a finite sample size to control the worst case error probabilities. In this paper, I consider the simpler task of inferring causal directions when the skeleton of the causal structure is known, and establish a similarly negative result concerning the possibility of controlling error probabilities. Although the result is negative in form, it has an interesting positive implication for causal discovery methods.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)409-418
Number of pages10
JournalSynthese
Volume163
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2008

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Error probabilities for inference of causal directions'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this