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An efficient algorithm for large-scale causal discovery

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Abstract

Causal discovery is a fundamental problem in scientific research. Although many researchers are committed to finding causal relationships from observational data, large-scale causal discovery remains a tremendous challenge. In this paper, a new approach for large-scale causal discovery is proposed, based on a split-and-merge strategy. The method first splits a given dataset into small subdatasets using a graph-partitioning method and then develops a effective algorithm to infer the causality of each subdataset. The entire causal structure with respect to the given dataset is achieved by combining all the causalities of each subdataset. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is effective and scalable for large-scale causal discovery problems.

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Notes

  1. http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/site/labs/compbio/Repository/.

  2. http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/site/labs/compbio/Repository/ http://www.norsys.com/networklibrary.html.

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Acknowledgments

This paper has been supported by Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province, China (2015A030401101), (2015B090922014), and by National Natural Science Foundation of China(61572144).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics and Electronic Engineering Department, Hanshan Normal University, Chaozhou, China

    Yinghan Hong

  2. School of computer Science and Technology, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

    Zhusong Liu

  3. School of Automation, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

    Guizhen Mai

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  1. Yinghan Hong
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  2. Zhusong Liu
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  3. Guizhen Mai
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Correspondence to Yinghan Hong.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Communicated by V. Loia.

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Hong, Y., Liu, Z. & Mai, G. An efficient algorithm for large-scale causal discovery. Soft Comput 21, 7381–7391 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-016-2281-0

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