Score: 1

Deriving Complete Constraints in Hidden Variable Models

Published: January 16, 2026 | arXiv ID: 2601.11242v1

By: Michael C. Sachs , Erin E. Gabriel , Robin J. Evans and more

Potential Business Impact:

Finds hidden patterns in data to make smarter guesses.

Business Areas:
A/B Testing Data and Analytics

Hidden variable graphical models can sometimes imply constraints on the observable distribution that are more complex than simple conditional independence relations. These observable constraints can falsify assumptions of the model that would otherwise be untestable due to the unobserved variables and can be used to constrain estimation procedures to improve statistical efficiency. Knowing the complete set of observable constraints is thus ideal, but this can be difficult to determine in many settings. In models with categorical observed variables and a joint distribution that is completely characterized by linear relations to the unobservable response function variables, we develop a systematic method for deriving the complete set of observable constraints. We illustrate the method in several new settings, including ones that imply both inequality and equality constraints.

Repos / Data Links

Page Count
35 pages

Category
Statistics:
Methodology