Repository logo

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
  1. Home
  2. Academic and Research Output
  3. Journal articles
  4. Recursive Causal Discovery (Abstract Reprint)
 
research article

Recursive Causal Discovery (Abstract Reprint)

Mokhtarian, Ehsan  
•
Elahi, Sepehr  
•
Akbari, Sina  
Show more
March 14, 2026
Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Causal discovery from observational data, i.e., learning the causal graph from a finite set of samples from the joint distribution of the variables, is often the first step toward the identification and estimation of causal effects, a key requirement in numerous scientific domains. Causal discovery is hampered by two main challenges: limited data results in errors in statistical testing and the computational complexity of the learning task is daunting. This paper builds upon and extends four of our prior publications (Mokhtarian et al., 2021; Akbari et al., 2021; Mokhtarian et al., 2022, 2023a). These works introduced the concept of removable variables, which are the only variables that can be removed recursively for the purpose of causal discovery. Presence and identification of removable variables allow recursive approaches for causal discovery, a promising solution that helps to address the aforementioned challenges by reducing the problem size successively. This reduction not only minimizes conditioning sets in each conditional independence (CI) test, leading to fewer errors but also significantly decreases the number of required CI tests. The worst-case performances of these methods nearly match the lower bound. In this paper, we present a unified framework for the proposed algorithms, refined with additional details and enhancements for a coherent presentation. A comprehensive literature review is also included, comparing the computational complexity of our methods with existing approaches, showcasing their state-of-the-art efficiency. Another contribution of this paper is the release of RCD, a Python package that efficiently implements these algorithms. This package is designed for practitioners and researchers interested in applying these methods in practical scenarios. The package is available at github.com/ban-epfl/rcd, with comprehensive documentation provided at rcdpackage.com.

  • Details
  • Metrics
Type
research article
DOI
10.1609/aaai.v40i47.41399
Author(s)
Mokhtarian, Ehsan  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Elahi, Sepehr  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Akbari, Sina  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Kiyavash, Negar  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Date Issued

2026-03-14

Publisher

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)

Published in
Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Volume

40

Issue

47

Start page

39884

End page

39884

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
BAN  
Available on Infoscience
March 23, 2026
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/261818
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Contact
  • infoscience@epfl.ch

  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Follow us on LinkedIn
  • Follow us on X
  • Follow us on Youtube
AccessibilityLegal noticePrivacy policyCookie settingsEnd User AgreementGet helpFeedback

Infoscience is a service managed and provided by the Library and IT Services of EPFL. © EPFL, tous droits réservés