Permutation-based Inference for Variational Learning of DAGs

TMLR Paper6165 Authors

Abstract: Estimating the structure of Bayesian networks as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) from observational data is a fundamental challenge, particularly in causal discovery. Bayesian approaches excel by quantifying uncertainty and addressing identifiability, but key obstacles remain: (i) representing distributions over DAGs and (ii) estimating a posterior in the underlying combinatorial space. We introduce PIVID, a method that jointly infers a distribution over permutations and DAGs using variational inference and continuous relaxations of discrete distributions. Through experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets, we show that PIVID can outperform deterministic and Bayesian approaches, achieving superior accuracy-uncertainty trade-offs while scaling efficiently with the number of variables.

Submission Length: Regular submission (no more than 12 pages of main content)

Assigned Action Editor: ~Jean_Honorio1

Submission Number: 6165