Re: generate a random JPD along its p-map DAG

From: Denver Dash (ddash@sis.pitt.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 27 2001 - 05:43:55 PDT

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    Hi again,

    Yeah, I realize now that my original answer was not correct, and I see why
    your question is not trivial.

    You have two reasons a dag might not be a perfect map: either the Markov
    condition is violated or faithfulness is violated. The Markov condition is
    guaranteed by the syntax of a Bayesian network. However, by making sure
    each column in the CPT is different for each node N you guarantee that N
    will be truly dependent on its parents, but you still do not guarantee that
    all nodes d-connected to N will satisfy a corresponding conditional
    dependence test. That is, you are only guaranteeing local faithfulness, not
    global faithfulness.

    I'm not sure how to insure global faithfulness without exhaustively checking
    all conditional dependencies.

     However, I do think the probability of violating faithfulness is very
    small (of course this must depend on how you sample the parameters of the
    network, but for a uniform random sampling the probability I believe is 0).

    Anyway, sorry for responding without thinking it out carefully.

    Denver.

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Xiangdong An" <xdan@cis.uoguelph.ca>
    To: "Denver Dash" <ddash@sis.pitt.edu>
    Cc: <uai@cs.orst.edu>
    Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 5:49 PM
    Subject: generate a random JPD along its p-map DAG

    > Hi Denver,
    >
    > Thanks for your reply.
    > My intention is the first of your interpretation.
    >
    > So by that way, we can generate a random JPD along a perfect
    > map DAG D. That is, if a JPD can be generated by generating
    > a set of conditional probability distributions {P(Xi|II(Xi))}
    > (II(Xi) are parents of Xi in a DAG D on an ordering X1,X2,...,Xn)
    > such that II(Xi) is the minimum set of predecessors satisfying
    > P(Xi|II(Xi))=P(Xi|X1,...,Xi-1), then the DAG D is a perfect map
    > of the JPD. I think this saying is equivalent to your statement
    > in (1).
    >
    > My question is, we know for a JPD, there is no guarantee that
    > a DAG exists to be its perfect map. I want to know what properties
    > make such generated JPD to have the DAG to be its perfect map?
    > i.e. What makes the JPD read off the DAG special from a randomly
    > given JPD which may not have a perfect map DAG?

    >
    > Xiangdong
    >
    > On Wed, 26 Sep 2001, Denver Dash wrote:
    >
    > > I can think of at least two ways to interpret what you are trying to do,
    > > here is the answer for all three interpretations:
    > >
    > > (1) I want to generate a random JPD along with its perfect map D.
    > > To do this, it is sufficient to construct a random dag and randomly set
    the
    > > parameters so that no two columns in a given table are identical. The
    dag
    > > will be a perfect map to the JPD generated by the network.
    > >
    > > (2) Given a JPD I want to construct its perfect map D.
    > > As far as I know, the only way to do this is to query the JPD for
    > > independence relations along the lines of a constraint-based learning
    > > algorithm, for example the PC algorithm (given in the book "Causation,
    > > Prediction and Search", Spirtes, Glymour and Scheines), or Pearl and
    Verma's
    > > algorithm (http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/pearl91theory.html).
    > >
    > > Hope this helps,
    > > Denver.
    > > ----
    > > Denver Dash http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~ddash
    >



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