arXiv:2604.25295cs.LG2026-04

不依赖优化,用矩阵运算直接推断因果顺序。

Optimization-Free Topological Sort for Causal Discovery via the Schur Complement of Score Jacobians

  • 通过分数雅可比矩阵的舒尔补,将因果排序转化为代数计算
  • 在 d=1000 维非线性系统上实现高效因果结构分析
  • 适合追求高维因果发现且关注统计估计精度的研究者

连续因果发现通常将表征学习与非凸无环惩罚的结构优化耦合,导致求解器易陷入局部最优,难以扩展到高维场景。本文提出解耦范式,将瓶颈从非凸优化转移到统计得分估计。提出分数-舒尔拓扑排序(SSTS)算法,直接从无约束生成模型中提取拓扑顺序,跳过约束结构优化。理论上证明:在线性条件下,图边际化等价于对得分-雅可比信息矩阵(SJIM)计算舒尔补,将无环约束转化为代数操作,主要代价为 O(d³) 运算。针对非线性系统,提出期望差距建模与分块-SSTS,压缩提取深度并控制结构误差。实验表明,SSTS 可在 d=1000 的非线性图上进行因果结构分析。结果揭示:一旦绕过非凸优化瓶颈,连续因果发现的结构保真度受全局得分几何有限样本估计方差限制。该工作将可扩展因果发现从约束优化问题重定义为统计估计挑战。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Continuous causal discovery typically couples representation learning with structural optimization via non-convex acyclicity penalties, which subjects solvers to local optima and restricts scalability in high-dimensional regimes. We propose a decoupled paradigm that shifts the causal discovery bottleneck from non-convex optimization to statistical score estimation. We introduce the Score-Schur Topological Sort (SSTS), an algorithm that extracts topological order directly from unconstrained generative models, bypassing constrained structure optimization. We establish that the causal hierarchy leaves a geometric signature within the score function: iterative graph marginalization is mathematically equivalent to computing the Schur complement of the Score-Jacobian Information Matrix (SJIM) under linear conditions. This translates the acyclicity constraint into an algebraic procedure with a dominant cost of O(d^3) operations. For non-linear systems, we formulate the expectation gap of Schur marginalization and introduce Block-SSTS to compress extraction depth, bounding structural error. Empirically, SSTS allows causal structural analysis on non-linear graphs up to d=1000. At this scale, our framework indicates that once the non-convex optimization bottleneck is mathematically bypassed, the structural fidelity of continuous causal discovery is bounded by the finite-sample estimation variance of the global score geometry. By reducing graph extraction to matrix operations, this work reframes scalable causal discovery from a constrained optimization problem to a statistical estimation challenge.

因果发现拓扑排序舒尔补高维建模

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