Title
Structure learning in Bayesian Networks using regular vines.
Abstract
Learning the structure of a Bayesian Network from multidimensional data is an important task in many situations, as it allows understanding conditional (in)dependence relations which in turn can be used for prediction. Current methods mostly assume a multivariate normal or a discrete multinomial model. A new greedy learning algorithm for continuous non-Gaussian variables, where marginal distributions can be arbitrary, as well as the dependency structure, is proposed. It exploits the regular vine approximation of the model, which is a tree-based hierarchical construction with pair-copulae as building blocks. It is shown that the networks obtainable with our algorithm belong to a certain subclass of chordal graphs. Chordal graphs representations are often preferred, as they allow very efficient message passing and information propagation in intervention studies. It is illustrated through several examples and real data applications that the possibility of using non-Gaussian margins and a non-linear dependency structure outweighs the restriction to chordal graphs.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1016/j.csda.2016.03.003
Computational Statistics & Data Analysis
Keywords
Field
DocType
Bayesian Networks,Regular vines,Pair-copula constructions,Structure learning,Chordal graph,Junction tree
Structure learning,Chordal graph,Dependency structure,Exploit,Bayesian network,Multivariate normal distribution,Statistics,Message passing,Marginal distribution,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
101
C
0167-9473
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.57
15
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ingrid Hobæk Haff1365.17
Kjersti Aas27310.22
Arnoldo Frigessi314715.62
Virginia Lacal430.90