2001 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 175-185
This paper deals with problems of recovering a causal structure by using not only conditional independence relationships but also prior knowledge when data are generated according to the causal structure among variables. Although some algorithms for recovering a causal structure based on independencies have been developed, the influence of prior knowledge on the recovery algorithms has not been clarified. In this paper, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence on unidentified arrows in a recovered diagram is given in terms of graph structure. Also, it is shown that a causal structure such that a recovered diagram is a forest can be recovered by recognizing exogenous variables in a causal diagram completely. The result enables us to elucidate enough prior information to determine a causal diagram uniquely.
