用图神经网络学习因果图概率分布,提升复杂数据下的因果发现能力。
From Observations to Causations: A GNN-based Probabilistic Prediction Framework for Causal Discovery
- 基于GNN构建概率化因果图框架,同时编码节点与边属性
- 在合成与真实数据上优于传统及非GNN方法,兼具高准确率与可扩展性
- 适合需要可靠因果推理的科研与决策场景
从观测数据中进行因果发现极具挑战,尤其在大规模数据与复杂关系下。传统方法常面临可扩展性差和难以捕捉全局结构的问题。为此,我们提出一种基于图神经网络(GNN)的概率预测框架,学习整个因果图空间的概率分布,而非输出单一确定性图。该框架利用GNN将节点与边属性统一编码为图表示,直接从数据中学习复杂因果结构。模型在包含互信息、条件熵等统计量的多样化合成数据集上训练,捕获局部与全局数据特性。我们将因果发现建模为监督学习任务,直接预测完整图结构。实验表明,该方法在合成与真实数据集上均显著优于传统及非GNN基线方法,包括另一GNN方法,在准确率与可扩展性方面表现突出,且无需额外训练。该概率框架大幅提升了因果结构学习能力,对跨领域决策与科学发现具有重要意义。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Causal discovery from observational data is challenging, especially with large datasets and complex relationships. Traditional methods often struggle with scalability and capturing global structural information. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a novel graph neural network (GNN)-based probabilistic framework that learns a probability distribution over the entire space of causal graphs, unlike methods that output a single deterministic graph. Our framework leverages a GNN that encodes both node and edge attributes into a unified graph representation, enabling the model to learn complex causal structures directly from data. The GNN model is trained on a diverse set of synthetic datasets augmented with statistical and information-theoretic measures, such as mutual information and conditional entropy, capturing both local and global data properties. We frame causal discovery as a supervised learning problem, directly predicting the entire graph structure. Our approach demonstrates superior performance, outperforming both traditional and recent non-GNN-based methods, as well as a GNN-based approach, in terms of accuracy and scalability on synthetic and real-world datasets without further training. This probabilistic framework significantly improves causal structure learning, with broad implications for decision-making and scientific discovery across various fields.
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