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Abstract:
We describe a method for causal inference that measures the strength of statistical dependence by the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of kernel-based conditional cross-covariance operators. We consider the increase of the dependence of two variables X and Y by conditioning on a third variable Z as a hint for Z being a common effect of X and Y. Based on this assumption, we collect "votes" for hypothetical causal directions and orient the edges according to the majority vote. For most of our experiments with artificial and real-world data our method has outperformed the conventional constraint-based inductive causation (IC) algorithm.