A Fast Non-parametric Approach for Causal Structure Learning in Polytrees
We study the problem of causal structure learning with no assumptions on the functional relationships and noise. We develop DAG-FOCI, a computationally fast algorithm for this setting that is based on the FOCI variable selection algorithm in <cit.>. DAG-FOCI requires no tuning parameter and outputs the parents and the Markov boundary of a response variable of interest. We provide high-dimensional guarantees of our procedure when the underlying graph is a polytree. Furthermore, we demonstrate the applicability of DAG-FOCI on real data from computational biology <cit.> and illustrate the robustness of our methods to violations of assumptions.
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