Algorithmic barriers to representing conditional independence

Nathanael L. Ackerman, Jeremy Avigad, Cameron E. Freer, Daniel M. Roy, Jason M. Rute

Abstract: We define a represention of conditional independence in terms of products of probability kernels, and ask when such representations are computable. We pursue this question in the context of exchangeable sequences and arrays of random variables, which arise in statistical contexts. Exchangeable sequences are conditionally i.i.d. by de Finetti's theorem. Known results about the computability of de Finetti's theorem imply that these conditional independences are computable. The conditional independences underlying exchangeable arrays are characterized by the Aldous-Hoover theorem. In the special case of adjacency matrices of undirected graphs, i.e., symmetric binary arrays, this representation theorem expresses the conditional independences in terms of graphons. We prove that there exist exchangeable random graphs that can be computably sampled but whose corresponding graphons are not computable as functions or even as L <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> equivalence classes. We also give results on the approximability of graphons in certain special cases.