基于信息传递解释的σ干预及其因果演算

The σ-intervention Based on Information Account of Causality and Its Corresponding Causal Calculus

因果图模型框架和潜在结果框架是当今因果建模的两个主要框架,有其各自的特点和相对流行的应用领域.一个结合两个框架优点的工作是单世界干预图模型(SWIG)和基于它的po-演算.本文受到因果关系的信息传递解释的启发,提出了信息干预算子σ(·)和信息因果网络,给出了相应的σ-演算.一方面,指出了它和do-演算的联系和区别;另一方面,它与SWIG一样具备判断观测变量和反事实变量之间条件独立性的便利性,同时还有类似do的形式化σ算子.

The potential outcome framework and structural causal model are two main frameworks for causal modeling,and there are efforts to combine the merits of each framework,such as the single world intervention graph(SWIG)and its potential outcome calculus.In this paper,we propose the info intervention inspired by under-standing the causality as information transfer,and provide the corresponding causal calculus.On one hand,we explain the connection between info calculus and do calcu-lus.On the other hand,we show that the info calculus is as convenient as the SWIG to check the conditional independence,and most importantly,it owns an operator σ(·)for formalizing causal queries.