34,757 research outputs found
Telling Cause from Effect using MDL-based Local and Global Regression
We consider the fundamental problem of inferring the causal direction between
two univariate numeric random variables and from observational data.
The two-variable case is especially difficult to solve since it is not possible
to use standard conditional independence tests between the variables.
To tackle this problem, we follow an information theoretic approach based on
Kolmogorov complexity and use the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle to
provide a practical solution. In particular, we propose a compression scheme to
encode local and global functional relations using MDL-based regression. We
infer causes in case it is shorter to describe as a function of
than the inverse direction. In addition, we introduce Slope, an efficient
linear-time algorithm that through thorough empirical evaluation on both
synthetic and real world data we show outperforms the state of the art by a
wide margin.Comment: 10 pages, To appear in ICDM1
Causal Inference on Discrete Data using Additive Noise Models
Inferring the causal structure of a set of random variables from a finite
sample of the joint distribution is an important problem in science. Recently,
methods using additive noise models have been suggested to approach the case of
continuous variables. In many situations, however, the variables of interest
are discrete or even have only finitely many states. In this work we extend the
notion of additive noise models to these cases. We prove that whenever the
joint distribution \prob^{(X,Y)} admits such a model in one direction, e.g.
Y=f(X)+N, N \independent X, it does not admit the reversed model
X=g(Y)+\tilde N, \tilde N \independent Y as long as the model is chosen in a
generic way. Based on these deliberations we propose an efficient new algorithm
that is able to distinguish between cause and effect for a finite sample of
discrete variables. In an extensive experimental study we show that this
algorithm works both on synthetic and real data sets
Pulsar State Switching from Markov Transitions and Stochastic Resonance
Markov processes are shown to be consistent with metastable states seen in
pulsar phenomena, including intensity nulling, pulse-shape mode changes,
subpulse drift rates, spindown rates, and X-ray emission, based on the
typically broad and monotonic distributions of state lifetimes. Markovianity
implies a nonlinear magnetospheric system in which state changes occur
stochastically, corresponding to transitions between local minima in an
effective potential. State durations (though not transition times) are thus
largely decoupled from the characteristic time scales of various magnetospheric
processes. Dyadic states are common but some objects show at least four states
with some transitions forbidden. Another case is the long-term intermittent
pulsar B1931+24 that has binary radio-emission and torque states with wide, but
non-monotonic duration distributions. It also shows a quasi-period of
days in a 13-yr time sequence, suggesting stochastic resonance in a Markov
system with a forcing function that could be strictly periodic or
quasi-periodic. Nonlinear phenomena are associated with time-dependent activity
in the acceleration region near each magnetic polar cap. The polar-cap diode is
altered by feedback from the outer magnetosphere and by return currents from an
equatorial disk that may also cause the neutron star to episodically charge and
discharge. Orbital perturbations in the disk provide a natural periodicity for
the forcing function in the stochastic resonance interpretation of B1931+24.
Disk dynamics may introduce additional time scales in observed phenomena.
Future work can test the Markov interpretation, identify which pulsar types
have a propensity for state changes, and clarify the role of selection effects.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures, submitted to the Astrophysical Journa
Determination of Nonlinear Genetic Architecture using Compressed Sensing
We introduce a statistical method that can reconstruct nonlinear genetic
models (i.e., including epistasis, or gene-gene interactions) from
phenotype-genotype (GWAS) data. The computational and data resource
requirements are similar to those necessary for reconstruction of linear
genetic models (or identification of gene-trait associations), assuming a
condition of generalized sparsity, which limits the total number of gene-gene
interactions. An example of a sparse nonlinear model is one in which a typical
locus interacts with several or even many others, but only a small subset of
all possible interactions exist. It seems plausible that most genetic
architectures fall in this category. Our method uses a generalization of
compressed sensing (L1-penalized regression) applied to nonlinear functions of
the sensing matrix. We give theoretical arguments suggesting that the method is
nearly optimal in performance, and demonstrate its effectiveness on broad
classes of nonlinear genetic models using both real and simulated human
genomes.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1408.342
Identifiability of Causal Graphs using Functional Models
This work addresses the following question: Under what assumptions on the
data generating process can one infer the causal graph from the joint
distribution? The approach taken by conditional independence-based causal
discovery methods is based on two assumptions: the Markov condition and
faithfulness. It has been shown that under these assumptions the causal graph
can be identified up to Markov equivalence (some arrows remain undirected)
using methods like the PC algorithm. In this work we propose an alternative by
defining Identifiable Functional Model Classes (IFMOCs). As our main theorem we
prove that if the data generating process belongs to an IFMOC, one can identify
the complete causal graph. To the best of our knowledge this is the first
identifiability result of this kind that is not limited to linear functional
relationships. We discuss how the IFMOC assumption and the Markov and
faithfulness assumptions relate to each other and explain why we believe that
the IFMOC assumption can be tested more easily on given data. We further
provide a practical algorithm that recovers the causal graph from finitely many
data; experiments on simulated data support the theoretical findings
Stochastic Synapses Enable Efficient Brain-Inspired Learning Machines
Recent studies have shown that synaptic unreliability is a robust and
sufficient mechanism for inducing the stochasticity observed in cortex. Here,
we introduce Synaptic Sampling Machines, a class of neural network models that
uses synaptic stochasticity as a means to Monte Carlo sampling and unsupervised
learning. Similar to the original formulation of Boltzmann machines, these
models can be viewed as a stochastic counterpart of Hopfield networks, but
where stochasticity is induced by a random mask over the connections. Synaptic
stochasticity plays the dual role of an efficient mechanism for sampling, and a
regularizer during learning akin to DropConnect. A local synaptic plasticity
rule implementing an event-driven form of contrastive divergence enables the
learning of generative models in an on-line fashion. Synaptic sampling machines
perform equally well using discrete-timed artificial units (as in Hopfield
networks) or continuous-timed leaky integrate & fire neurons. The learned
representations are remarkably sparse and robust to reductions in bit precision
and synapse pruning: removal of more than 75% of the weakest connections
followed by cursory re-learning causes a negligible performance loss on
benchmark classification tasks. The spiking neuron-based synaptic sampling
machines outperform existing spike-based unsupervised learners, while
potentially offering substantial advantages in terms of power and complexity,
and are thus promising models for on-line learning in brain-inspired hardware
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