Causal Mechanism-based Model Construction

Authors:

Tsai-Ching Lu and Marek J. Druzdzel
Decision Systems Laboratory
School of Information Sciences
and Intelligent Systems Program
University of Pittsburgh
e-mail: ching@sis.pitt.edu, marek@sis.pitt.edu

Tze Yun Leong
Medical Computing Laboratory
Department of Computer Science
School of Computing
National University of Singapore
Singapore 119260
e-mail: leongty@comp.nus.edu.sg

Abstract:

We propose a framework for building graphical causal model that is based on the concept of causal mechanisms. Causal models are intuitive for human users and, more importantly, support the prediction of the effect of manipulation. We describe an implementation of the proposed framework as an interactive model construction module, ImaGeNIe, in SMILE (Structural Modeling, Inference, and Learning Engine) and in GeNIe (SMILE's Windows user interface).