Using Feature Selection for Local Causal Structure Learning

Abstract

Local causal structure learning aims to discover and distinguish the direct causes and direct effects of a target variable. However, the state-of-the-art local causal structure learning algorithms need to perform an exhaustive subset search within the currently selected variables for PC (i.e., parents and children) discovery. In this article, we propose an efficient local causal structure learning algorithm around a target variable, called LCS-FS (Local Causal Structure learning by Feature Selection). First, to construct the local causal skeleton of the target, we employ feature selection for finding PC without searching for conditioning sets to speed up PC discovery, leading to improve the skeleton construction efficiency. Second, to orient edges in this local causal skeleton, we propose an efficient method to find separating sets from the subsets of PC for identifying V-structures. With the integration of feature selection and the new way of finding separating sets, LCS-FS recursively finds the spouses of Markov blankets in local causal skeleton for edge orientations, until the direct causes and direct effects of the target are distinguished. The experiments on five benchmark Bayesian networks with the number of variables from 35 to 801 validate that our algorithm achieves higher efficiency and better accuracy than the state-of-the-art local causal structure learning algorithms.