Staged tree models enhance Bayesian networks by incorporating context-specific dependencies through a stage-based structure. In this study, we present a new framework for estimating staged trees using hierarchical clustering on the probability simplex, utilizing simplex basesd divergences. We conduct a thorough evaluation of several distance and divergence metrics including Total Variation, Hellinger, Fisher, and Kaniadakis; alongside various linkage methods such as Ward.D2, average, complete, and McQuitty. We conducted the simulation experiments that reveals Total Variation, especially when combined with Ward.D2 linkage, consistently produces staged trees with better model fit, structure recovery, and computational efficiency. We assess performance by utilizing relative Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), and Hamming distance. Our findings indicate that although Backward Hill Climbing (BHC) delivers competitive outcomes, it incurs a significantly higher computational cost. On the other, Total Variation divergence with Ward.D2 linkage, achieves similar performance while providing significantly better computational efficiency, making it a more viable option for large-scale or time sensitive tasks.

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However, there is currently no framework to apply it to generic architectures, specifically ones with linear weight-sharing layers.

See Liu & Wang (2016, 2018); Liu (2017) formoredetails.

Recently, there has been significant interest in utilizing this information in the context of deep neural networks; however,relatively little isknown about the quality ofexisting approximationsinthiscontext.