No Arabic abstract
Graphical Markov models determined by acyclic digraphs (ADGs), also called directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), are widely studied in statistics, computer science (as Bayesian networks), operations research (as influence diagrams), and many related fields. Because different ADGs may determine the same Markov equivalence class, it long has been of interest to determine the efficiency gained in model specification and search by working directly with Markov equivalence classes of ADGs rather than with ADGs themselves. A computer program was written to enumerate the equivalence classes of ADG models as specified by Pearl & Vermas equivalence criterion. The program counted equivalence classes for models up to and including 10 vertices. The ratio of number of classes to ADGs appears to approach an asymptote of about 0.267. Classes were analyzed according to number of edges and class size. By edges, the distribution of number of classes approaches a Gaussian shape. By class size, classes of size 1 are most common, with the proportions for larger sizes initially decreasing but then following a more irregular pattern. The maximum number of classes generated by any undirected graph was found to increase approximately factorially. The program also includes a new variation of orderly algorithm for generating undirected graphs.
Assessing the magnitude of cause-and-effect relations is one of the central challenges found throughout the empirical sciences. The problem of identification of causal effects is concerned with determining whether a causal effect can be computed from a combination of observational data and substantive knowledge about the domain under investigation, which is formally expressed in the form of a causal graph. In many practical settings, however, the knowledge available for the researcher is not strong enough so as to specify a unique causal graph. Another line of investigation attempts to use observational data to learn a qualitative description of the domain called a Markov equivalence class, which is the collection of causal graphs that share the same set of observed features. In this paper, we marry both approaches and study the problem of causal identification from an equivalence class, represented by a partial ancestral graph (PAG). We start by deriving a set of graphical properties of PAGs that are carried over to its induced subgraphs. We then develop an algorithm to compute the effect of an arbitrary set of variables on an arbitrary outcome set. We show that the algorithm is strictly more powerful than the current state of the art found in the literature.
Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are learning methods for pattern recognition. The probabilistic HMMs have been one of the most used techniques based on the Bayesian model. First-order probabilistic HMMs were adapted to the theory of belief functions such that Bayesian probabilities were replaced with mass functions. In this paper, we present a second-order Hidden Markov Model using belief functions. Previous works in belief HMMs have been focused on the first-order HMMs. We extend them to the second-order model.
In this paper we go deep into the connection between duality and fields redefinition for general bilinear models involving the 1-form gauge field $A$. A duality operator is fixed based on gauge embedding procedure. Dual models are shown to fit in equivalence classes of models with same fields redefinitions.
Learning of user preferences, as represented by, for example, Conditional Preference Networks (CP-nets), has become a core issue in AI research. Recent studies investigate learning of CP-nets from randomly chosen examples or from membership and equivalence queries. To assess the optimality of learning algorithms as well as to better understand the combinatorial structure of classes of CP-nets, it is helpful to calculate certain learning-theoretic information complexity parameters. This article focuses on the frequently studied case of learning from so-called swap examples, which express preferences among objects that differ in only one attribute. It presents bounds on or exact values of some well-studied information complexity parameters, namely the VC dimension, the teaching dimension, and the recursive teaching dimension, for classes of acyclic CP-nets. We further provide algorithms that learn tree-structured and general acyclic CP-nets from membership queries. Using our results on complexity parameters, we assess the optimality of our algorithms as well as that of another query learning algorithm for acyclic CP-nets presented in the literature. Our algorithms are near-optimal, and can, under certain assumptions, be adapted to the case when the membership oracle is faulty.
The problem of deciding whether CSP instances admit solutions has been deeply studied in the literature, and several structural tractability results have been derived so far. However, constraint satisfaction comes in practice as a computation problem where the focus is either on finding one solution, or on enumerating all solutions, possibly projected to some given set of output variables. The paper investigates the structural tractability of the problem of enumerating (possibly projected) solutions, where tractability means here computable with polynomial delay (WPD), since in general exponentially many solutions may be computed. A general framework based on the notion of tree projection of hypergraphs is considered, which generalizes all known decomposition methods. Tractability results have been obtained both for classes of structures where output variables are part of their specification, and for classes of structures where computability WPD must be ensured for any possible set of output variables. These results are shown to be tight, by exhibiting dichotomies for classes of structures having bounded arity and where the tree decomposition method is considered.