Conditional independence ideals with hidden variables


Abstract in English

We study a class of determinantal ideals that are related to conditional independence (CI) statements with hidden variables. Such CI statements correspond to determinantal conditions on a matrix whose entries are probabilities of events involving the observed random variables. We focus on an example that generalizes the CI ideals of the intersection axiom. In this example, the minimal primes are again determinantal ideals, which is not true in general.

Download