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The Relativity of Causal Knowledge

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Recent advances in artificial intelligence reveal the limits of purely predictive systems and call for a shift toward causal and collaborative reasoning. Drawing inspiration from the revolution of Grothendieck in mathematics, we introduce the relativity of causal knowledge, which posits structural causal models (SCMs) are inherently imperfect, subjective representations embedded within networks of relationships. By leveraging category theory, we arrange SCMs into a functor category and show that their observational and interventional probability measures naturally form convex structures. This result allows us to encode non-intervened SCMs with convex spaces of probability measures. Next, using sheaf theory, we construct the network sheaf and cosheaf of causal knowledge. These structures enable the transfer of causal knowledge across the network while incorporating interventional consistency and the perspective of the subjects, ultimately leading to the formal, mathematical definition of relative causal knowledge.


Proofs for Folklore Theorems on the Radon-Nikodym Derivative

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Rigorous statements and formal proofs are presented for both foundational and advanced folklore theorems on the Radon-Nikodym derivative. The cases of product and marginal measures are carefully considered; and the hypothesis under which the statements hold are rigorously enumerated.


Imprecise Markov Semigroups and their Ergodicity

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We introduce the concept of imprecise Markov semigroup. It allows us to see Markov chains and processes with imprecise transition probabilities as (a collection of diffusion) operators, and thus to unlock techniques from geometry, functional analysis, and (high dimensional) probability to study their ergodic behavior. We show that, if the initial distribution of an imprecise Markov semigroup is known and invariant, under some conditions that also involve the geometry of the state space, eventually the ambiguity around the transition probability fades. We call this property ergodicity of the imprecise Markov semigroup, and we relate it to the classical (Birkhoff's) notion of ergodicity. We prove ergodicity both when the state space is Euclidean or a Riemannian manifold, and when it is an arbitrary measurable space. The importance of our findings for the fields of machine learning and computer vision is also discussed.


Distribution-Free Rates in Neyman-Pearson Classification

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

We consider the problem of Neyman-Pearson classification which models unbalanced classification settings where error w.r.t. a distribution $\mu_1$ is to be minimized subject to low error w.r.t. a different distribution $\mu_0$. Given a fixed VC class $\mathcal{H}$ of classifiers to be minimized over, we provide a full characterization of possible distribution-free rates, i.e., minimax rates over the space of all pairs $(\mu_0, \mu_1)$. The rates involve a dichotomy between hard and easy classes $\mathcal{H}$ as characterized by a simple geometric condition, a three-points-separation condition, loosely related to VC dimension.