Peter Spirtes

Department of Philosophy
Carnegie-Mellon University

Recent Advances in Causal Modelling Using Directed Graphs

Friday May 23 at 12:30pm in Smith 120

Directed acyclic graphs represent recursive structural equation models without correlated errors, but cannot represent non-recursive models or those with correlated errors. I will show how to represent structural equation models (recursive or non-recursive, with or without correlated errors) by a kind of graphical model which is an extension of directed acyclic graphs, and then describe how this representation can be used to solve problems concerning the equivalence of different models, and aids in model search, prediction, and the calculation of the effect of interventions upon a system given only partial information about the causal structure of the system.