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NOTMAD: estimating bayesian networks with sample-specific structures and parameters
arXiv
  • Benjamin Lengerich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
  • Caleb Ellington, Carnegie Mellon University, United States
  • Bryon Aragam, University of Chicago
  • Eric P. Xing, Carnegie Mellon University, United States & Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence
  • Manolis Kellis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Document Type
Article
Abstract

Context-specific Bayesian networks (i.e. directed acyclic graphs, DAGs) identify context-dependent relationships between variables, but the non-convexity induced by the acyclicity requirement makes it difficult to share information between context-specific estimators (e.g. with graph generator functions). For this reason, existing methods for inferring context-specific Bayesian networks have favored breaking datasets into subsamples, limiting statistical power and resolution, and preventing the use of multidimensional and latent contexts. To overcome this challenge, we propose NOTEARS-optimized Mixtures of Archetypal DAGs (NOTMAD). NOTMAD models context-specific Bayesian networks as the output of a function which learns to mix archetypal networks according to sample context. The archetypal networks are estimated jointly with the context-specific networks and do not require any prior knowledge. We encode the acyclicity constraint as a smooth regularization loss which is back-propagated to the mixing function; in this way, NOTMAD shares information between context-specific acyclic graphs, enabling the estimation of Bayesian network structures and parameters at even single-sample resolution. We demonstrate the utility of NOTMAD and sample-specific network inference through analysis and experiments, including patient-specific gene expression networks which correspond to morphological variation in cancer. © 2021, CC BY-NC-ND.

DOI
10.48550/arXiv.2111.01104
Publication Date
11-1-2021
Keywords
  • Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI),
  • Machine Learning (cs.LG),
  • Machine Learning (stat.ML)
Comments

Preprint: arXiv;

Archived with thanks to arXiv;

Preprint License: CC by NC-ND 4.0;

Uploaded 05 May 2022

Citation Information
B. Lengerich, C. Ellington, B. Aragam, E. Xing, and M. Kellis, "NOTMAD: estimating bayesian networks with sample-specific structures and parameters", arXiv, Nov 2021, doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2111.01104