The discovery of causal relationships is a fundamental problem in science and medicine. In recent years, many elegant approaches to discovering causal relationships between two variables from observational data have been proposed. However, most of these deal only with purely directed causal relationships and cannot det…
New method identifies causes in time series with latent variables.
problem Identifying direct and indirect causes in time series data with hidden variables.
method Proves necessary and sufficient conditions for causal feature selection using graph constraints and conditional independence tests.
result Method outperforms Granger causality in identifying causes with low false positives and false negatives.
Develops SCMs for latent selection to simplify causal analysis.
problem Latent selection complicates causal analysis.
method Introduces a conditioning operation for SCMs to encode latent selection.
result Conditioning operation preserves simplicity, acyclicity, and linearity of SCMs.
A novel circuit motif uses sister cells for inference with correlated priors.
problem Structured priors in neural systems pose architectural challenges.
method Proposes a novel circuit motif using sister cells to implement correlated priors without direct interactions.
result Demonstrates the efficacy of correlated priors for inference in noisy environments.
New method identifies root causes in presence of latent confounding.
problem Identifying root causes in the presence of latent variables.
method Extract Errors with Latents (EEL) procedure for inferring root causes.
result Superior accuracy and robustness compared to previous methods.
Jointly models cause-of-death mortality rates across multiple countries and genders.
problem Modeling cause-of-death mortality rates in a multinational setting.
method Multi-Output Gaussian Processes (MOGP) with Kronecker-structured kernels and latent factors.
result Efficiently captures heterogeneity and dependence across different factor inputs.
New method identifies common cause in causal insufficiency, revealing complex phase transitions.
problem Identifying common cause in causal insufficiency with observed joint probability.
method Generalized maximum likelihood method, closely related to maximum entropy principle.
result Identifies consistent common cause that aligns with the common cause principle.
Domain adaptation refers to the process of learning prediction models in a target domain by making use of data from a source domain. Many classic methods solve the domain adaptation problem by establishing a common latent space, which may cause the loss of many important properties across both domains. In this manuscri…
LaCIM avoids spurious correlation by modeling latent causal factors.
problem Avoiding spurious correlation in supervised learning.
method Introducing latent variables for causal prediction and optimizing over latent space.
result Improved interpretability, robustness, and prediction power on OOD scenarios.
Proposes a new condition to estimate latent variable causal graphs from observed data.
problem Estimating causal structures when observed variables are not the underlying causal variables.
method Introduces Generalized Independent Noise (GIN) condition and a recursive learning algorithm.
result Shows that GIN helps locate latent variables and identify their causal structure.
Paper simplifies calculating causation probabilities and ranks root causes.
problem Computational challenges in assessing causal relationships.
method Algorithmic simplifications and novel methodological framework for Root Cause Analysis.
result Significantly reduces computational complexity for calculating causation probabilities.
Deep learning methods have shown state of the art performance in a range of tasks from computer vision to natural language processing. However, it is well known that such systems are vulnerable to attackers who craft inputs in order to cause misclassification. The level of perturbation an attacker needs to introduce in…
Given data over variables (X1,...,Xm,Y) we consider the problem of finding out whether X jointly causes Y or whether they are all confounded by an unobserved latent variable Z. To do so, we take an information-theoretic approach based on Kolmogorov complexity. In a nutshell, we follow the postulate that firs…
Bayesian inference for topics in documents with many potential causes.
problem Estimating topic distributions in documents with many potential causes and few observations.
method Exact Bayesian inference using a linear-time algorithm with a simple formula.
result Exact Bayesian inference can be computed in linear time for a given upper bound on observations.
A method estimates causal parameters using a latent variable recovery.
problem Estimating causal parameters in contexts with multiple causes and unobserved confounding.
method Substitute adjustment via recovery of latent variables.
result Substitute adjustment estimates adjusted regression parameters under certain conditions.
VSCOUT detects anomalies in high-dimensional data using a hybrid VAE approach.
problem Challenges in classical SPC for high-dimensional, non-Gaussian data.
method Hybrid VAE architecture with ARD prior, ensemble filtering, and changepoint detection.
result VSCOUT achieves superior sensitivity to special-cause structure and controlled false alarms.
We describe a method for removing the effect of confounders in order to reconstruct a latent quantity of interest. The method, referred to as half-sibling regression, is inspired by recent work in causal inference using additive noise models. We provide a theoretical justification and illustrate the potential of the me…
This paper corrects climate model biases using a factor model approach.
problem Systematic biases in GCM outputs due to unobserved confounders.
method Factor model approach to learn latent confounders from historical data and apply them to enhance bias correction.
result Significant improvements in the accuracy of precipitation outputs.
CARE improves LLM aggregation by accounting for shared confounders.
problem LLM judges' correlated errors due to shared latent confounders.
method CARE explicitly models judges' scores as true quality and confounders.
result CARE reduces aggregation error by up to 26.8% across various benchmarks.
Alpha signals for statistical arbitrage strategies are often driven by latent factors. This paper analyses how to optimally trade with latent factors that cause prices to jump and diffuse. Moreover, we account for the effect of the trader's actions on quoted prices and the prices they receive from trading. Under fairly…
UT module refines VAE latent space, improving disentanglement and interpretability.
problem Irregular latent distributions cause posterior collapse and misalignment in VAEs.
method UT module uses G-KDE clustering, GM modeling, and PIT to transform latent space into uniform distribution.
result UT module enhances disentanglement and interpretability of latent representations.
Observed associations in a database may be due in whole or part to variations in unrecorded (latent) variables. Identifying such variables and their causal relationships with one another is a principal goal in many scientific and practical domains. Previous work shows that, given a partition of observed variables such …
(This comment has been updated to respond to Wang and Blei's rejoinder [arXiv:1910.07320].) The premise of the deconfounder method proposed in "Blessings of Multiple Causes" by Wang and Blei [arXiv:1805.06826], namely that a variable that renders multiple causes conditionally independent also controls for unmeasured mu…
We tackle causal discovery in linear systems with measurement error and unobserved causes.
problem Causal discovery in linear systems with measurement error and unobserved causes.
method Characterization of identifiability based on the mixing matrix, proposing causal structure learning methods.
result The structure of causal models can be identified under certain faithfulness assumptions.
Paper models non-linear dynamics from time series data.
problem Modeling non-linear dynamical systems from time series data.
method Introduces latent state modeling and a novel alternating minimization algorithm.
result LaNoLem achieves competitive performance in dynamics estimation and prediction.
Causal inference from observational data often assumes "ignorability," that all confounders are observed. This assumption is standard yet untestable. However, many scientific studies involve multiple causes, different variables whose effects are simultaneously of interest. We propose the deconfounder, an algorithm that…
A neural network finds causal relationships among latent variables.
problem Learning causal structure among latent variables in high-dimensional data.
method Redundant Input Neural Network (RINN) with modified architecture and regularized objective function.
result The RINN method successfully recovers latent causal structure between input and output variables.
Framework LiLY recovers latent causal variables from time-series data under distribution shifts.
problem Learning and correcting models under unknown distribution shifts in time-series data.
method LiLY framework that recovers latent causal variables and identifies their relations from temporal data under different distribution shifts.
result The framework reliably identifies time-delayed latent causal influences from observed variables under different distribution changes.
CLOUD method detects causal relationships in various data types without latent variable assumptions.
problem Detecting causal relationships in the presence of unobserved common causes.
method CLOUD method using Normalized Maximum Likelihood (NML) Code for various data types (discrete, mixed, continuous).
result CLOUD method is more effective than existing methods in inferring causal relationships.
Paper detects hierarchical changes in latent variable models from data streams.
problem Detecting changes at three levels: data distribution, latent variables, and number of latent variables.
method Information-theoretic framework using MDL and DNML for change detection.
result Effective in detecting changes with good interpretability.
We investigate the properties of multidimensional probability distributions in the context of latent space prior distributions of implicit generative models. Our work revolves around the phenomena arising while decoding linear interpolations between two random latent vectors -- regions of latent space in close proximit…
The estimation of treatment effects is a pervasive problem in medicine. Existing methods for estimating treatment effects from longitudinal observational data assume that there are no hidden confounders, an assumption that is not testable in practice and, if it does not hold, leads to biased estimates. In this paper, w…
In nonlinear latent variable models or dynamic models, if we consider the latent variables as confounders (common causes), the noise dependencies imply further relations between the observed variables. Such models are then closely related to causal discovery in the presence of nonlinear confounders, which is a challeng…
Integrates inductive biases into VAEs using intermediary latent variables.
problem Ineffective mechanisms for incorporating inductive biases into VAEs.
method InteL-VAEs use an intermediary latent space to control encoding, with a parametric function to enforce desired properties.
result InteL-VAEs lead to better generative models and representations.
Bayesian models for networks are often misspecified, leading to overconfident inference.
problem Real-world networks violate assumptions of geometry and link function in latent space models.
method Proposes a generalized posterior framework for random geometric graphs, using Link-Sequential R-SafeBayes to adaptively tune posterior regularization.
result Improved calibration and better link prediction performance demonstrated on synthetic and real-world networks.
Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) play an increasingly important role in machine learning. However, there is one fundamental issue hindering their practical applications: the absence of capability for encoding real-world samples. The conventional way of addressing this issue is to learn an encoder for GAN via Vari…
Study adapts liquidity model to equity auctions, revealing accelerated event rates and reduced price impact.
problem Understanding and predicting price dynamics in equity auctions.
method Adapted latent/revealed order book framework to equity auctions, measuring order submissions, cancellations, and diffusion rates.
result Equity auctions exhibit accelerated event rates leading to reduced price impact and decreased volatility.
Variational language models seek to estimate the posterior of latent variables with an approximated variational posterior. The model often assumes the variational posterior to be factorized even when the true posterior is not. The learned variational posterior under this assumption does not capture the dependency relat…
Paper distinguishes causal structures under latent confounding and selection bias.
problem Distinguishing causal relationships when latent variables and selection bias are present.
method Formulated selected-marginalized directed graphs (smDGs) to distinguish causal structures.
result Two causal structures are indistinguishable if they have the same selected-marginalized directed graph.
In many applications, observed data are influenced by some combination of latent causes. For example, suppose sensors are placed inside a building to record responses such as temperature, humidity, power consumption and noise levels. These random, observed responses are typically affected by many unobserved, latent fac…
Generative AutoEncoders require a chosen probability distribution in latent space, usually multivariate Gaussian. The original Variational AutoEncoder (VAE) uses randomness in encoder - causing problematic distortion, and overlaps in latent space for distinct inputs. It turned out unnecessary: we can instead use determ…
Unified framework for generating data by modeling causal and correlational dependencies.
problem Modeling both causal and correlational dependencies among latent factors.
method Causal-Correlation Variational Autoencoder (C2VAE) framework.
result Improves generation quality, disentanglement, and intervention fidelity.
Variational Auto-Encoders enforce their learned intermediate latent-space data distribution to be a simple distribution, such as an isotropic Gaussian. However, this causes the posterior collapse problem and loses manifold structure which can be important for datasets such as facial images. A GAN can transform a simple…
Regularization preserves topological data structure in autoencoders.
problem Ensuring topological data structure preservation in autoencoders.
method Regularization using Legendre nodes to preserve manifold embedding.
result Regularized autoencoders ensure one-to-one embedding of data manifolds.
New model improves neural network robustness against input manipulations.
problem Improving neural network robustness against input manipulations.
method Causal view and deep causal manipulation augmented model (deep CAMA) with data augmentation and test-time fine-tuning.
result Deep CAMA shows superior robustness against unseen manipulations compared to traditional models.
Proposes a new approach to MSDA by introducing latent covariate shift to handle varying label distributions.
problem Challenges of conventional MSDA approaches in real-world settings where label distributions vary across domains.
method Introduces latent covariate shift (LCS) and a causal generative model with latent noises, latent content variable, and latent style variable.
result Identifies latent content variable up to block identifiability, enabling more nuanced label distribution recovery.
Bayesian deep learning faces posterior collapse due to likelihood vs. prior competition.
problem Posterior collapse in Bayesian deep learning models.
method Identified competition between likelihood and prior regularization in a linear latent variable model.
result Posterior collapse is related to neural and dimensional collapse, suggesting a broader learning issue.
Paper extends FOFC algorithm to work with mixed data types.
problem Designing causal discovery algorithms for mixed data types.
method Proves tetrad constraint can be entailed for mixed data types and applies FOFC algorithm.
result FOFC algorithm can work on mixed data types.