Reasoning about Independence in Probabilistic Models of Relational Data

We extend the theory of d-separation to cases in which data instances are not independent and identically distributed. We show that applying the rules of d-separation directly to the structure of probabilistic models of relational data inaccurately infers conditional independence. We introduce relational d-separation, a theory for deriving conditional independence facts from relational models. We provide a new representation, the abstract ground graph, that enables a sound, complete, and computationally efficient method for answering d-separation queries about relational models, and we present empirical results that demonstrate effectiveness.Comment: 61 pages, substantial revisions to formalisms, theory, and related wor

On the Intersection Property of Conditional Independence and its Application to Causal Discovery

This work investigates the intersection property of conditional independence. It states that for random variables $A,B,C$ and $X$ we have that $X$ independent of $A$ given $B,C$ and $X$ independent of $B$ given $A,C$ implies $X$ independent of $(A,B)$ given $C$. Under the assumption that the joint distribution has a continuous density, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which the intersection property holds. The result has direct applications to causal inference: it leads to strictly weaker conditions under which the graphical structure becomes identifiable from the joint distribution of an additive noise model