The d-separation criterion in Categorical Probability

07/12/2022

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by   Tobias Fritz, et al.

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The d-separation criterion detects the compatibility of a joint probability distribution with a directed acyclic graph through certain conditional independences. In this work, we study this problem in the context of categorical probability theory by introducing a categorical definition of causal models, a categorical notion of d-separation, and proving an abstract version of the d-separation criterion. This approach has two main benefits. First, categorical d-separation is a very intuitive criterion based on topological connectedness. Second, our results apply in measure-theoretic probability (with standard Borel spaces), and therefore provide a clean proof of the equivalence of local and global Markov properties with causal compatibility for continuous and mixed variables.