Title
Learning measurement models for unobserved variables
Abstract
Observed associations in a database may be due in whole or part to variations in unrecorded ("latent") variables. Identifying such variables and their causal relationships with one another is a principal goal in many scientific and practical domains. Previous work shows that, given a partition of observed variables such that members of a class share only a single latent common cause, standard search algorithms for causal Bayes nets can infer structural relations between latent variables. We introduce an algorithm for discovering such partitions when they exist. Uniquely among available procedures, the algorithm is (asymptotically) correct under standard assumptions in causal Bayes net search algorithms, requires no prior knowledge of the number of latent variables, and does not depend on the mathematical form of the relationships among the latent variables. We evaluate the algorithm on a variety of simulated data sets.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2003
CoRR
available procedure,unobserved variable,standard assumption,causal relationship,causal bayes net,causal bayes,standard search algorithm,search algorithm,single latent,measurement model,latent variable,observed association
Field
DocType
Volume
Econometrics,Structural equation modeling,Computer science,Latent variable model,Latent class model,Latent variable,Bayesian network,Artificial intelligence,Probabilistic latent semantic analysis,Local independence,Factor analysis,Machine learning
Conference
abs/1212.2516
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
0-127-05664-5
8
1.60
References 
Authors
2
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ricardo Bezerra de Andrade e Silva110924.56
Richard Scheines225637.19
Clark Glymour346882.20
Peter Spirtes4616101.07