Poster
A Skewness-Based Criterion for Addressing Heteroscedastic Noise in Causal Discovery
Yingyu Lin · Yuxing Huang · Wenqin Liu · Haoran Deng · Ignavier Ng · Kun Zhang · Mingming Gong · Yian Ma · Biwei Huang
Hall 3 + Hall 2B #445
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Abstract
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Sat 26 Apr midnight PDT
— 2:30 a.m. PDT
Abstract:
Real-world data often violates the equal-variance assumption (homoscedasticity), making it essential to account for heteroscedastic noise in causal discovery. In this work, we explore heteroscedastic symmetric noise models (HSNMs), where the effect YY is modeled as Y=f(X)+σ(X)NY=f(X)+σ(X)N, with XX as the cause and NN as independent noise following a symmetric distribution. We introduce a novel criterion for identifying HSNMs based on the skewness of the score (i.e., the gradient of the log density) of the data distribution. This criterion establishes a computationally tractable measurement that is zero in the causal direction but nonzero in the anticausal direction, enabling the causal direction discovery. We extend this skewness-based criterion to the multivariate setting and propose \texttt{SkewScore}, an algorithm that handles heteroscedastic noise without requiring the extraction of exogenous noise. We also conduct a case study on the robustness of \texttt{SkewScore} in a bivariate model with a latent confounder, providing theoretical insights into its performance. Empirical studies further validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
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