An information-theoretic approach for heterogeneous differentiable causal discovery.

Journal: Neural networks : the official journal of the International Neural Network Society
Published Date:

Abstract

With the advancement of deep learning, a variety of differential causal discovery methods have emerged, inevitably attracting more attention for their excellent scalability and interpretability. However, these methods often struggle with complex heterogeneous datasets that exhibit environmental diversity and are characterized by shifts in noise distribution. To this end, we introduce a novel information-theoretic approach designed to enhance the robustness of differential causal discovery methods. Specifically, we integrate Minimum Error Entropy (MEE) as an adaptive error regulator into the structure learning framework. MEE effectively reduces error variability across diverse samples, enabling our model to adapt dynamically to varying levels of complexity and noise. This adjustment significantly improves the precision and stability of the model. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets have demonstrated significant performance enhancements over existing methods, affirming the effectiveness of our approach. The code is available at https://github.com/ElleZWQ/MHCD.

Authors

  • Wanqi Zhou
    Key Laboratory for Intelligent Nano Materials and Devices of Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China.
  • Shuanghao Bai
    Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China. Electronic address: baishuanghao@stu.xjtu.edu.cn.
  • Yuqing Xie
    Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China. Electronic address: felixxyq@stu.xjtu.edu.cn.
  • Yicong He
    Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China. Electronic address: yicong.he@xjtu.edu.cn.
  • Qibin Zhao
    RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP), 103-0027, Japan.
  • Badong Chen
    Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710049, China.