On the use of local search heuristics to improve GES-based Bayesian network learning

Bayesian networks learning is computationally expensive even in the case of sacrificing the optimality of the result. Many methods aim at obtaining quality solutions in affordable times. Most of them are based on local search algorithms, as they allow evaluating candidate networks in a very efficien...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Alonso, Juan Ignacio, Ossa, Luis de la, Gámez Martín, José Antonio, Puerta Callejón, José Miguel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
Repositorio:RUIdeRA. Repositorio Institucional de la UCLM
OAI Identifier:oai:ruidera.uclm.es:10578/28302
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2017.12.011
http://hdl.handle.net/10578/28302
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Bayesian networks
Greedy equivalence search
Metaheuristics
Local search
Descripción
Sumario:Bayesian networks learning is computationally expensive even in the case of sacrificing the optimality of the result. Many methods aim at obtaining quality solutions in affordable times. Most of them are based on local search algorithms, as they allow evaluating candidate networks in a very efficient way, and can be further improved by us ing local search-based metaheuristics to avoid getting stuck in local optima. This approach has been successfully applied in searching for network structures in the space of directed acyclic graphs. Other algorithms search for the networks in the space of equiva lence classes. The most important of these is GES (Greedy Equiv alence Search). It guarantees obtaining the optimal network under certain conditions. However, it can also get stuck in local optima when learning from datasets with limited size. This article proposes the use of local search-based metaheuristics as a way to improve the behaviour of GES in such circumstances. These methods also guar antee asymptotical optimality, and the experiments show that they improve upon the score of the networks obtained with GES.