Probability distributions with summary graph structure
Nanny Wermuth · 2008
A joint density of many variables may satisfy a possibly large set of independence statements, called its independence structure. Often the structure of interest is representable by a graph that consists of nodes representing variables and of edges that couple node pairs. We consider joint densities of this type, generated by a stepwise process in which all variables and dependences of interest are included. Otherwise, there are no constraints on the type of variables or on the form of the generating conditional densities. For the joint density that then results after marginalising and conditioning, we derive what we name the summary graph. It is seen to capture precisely the independence structure implied by the generating process, it identifies dependences which remain undistorted due to direct or indirect confounding and it alerts to such, possibly severe distortions in other parametrizations. Summary graphs preserve their form after marginalising and conditioning and they include multivariate regression chain graphs as special cases. We use operators for matrix representations of graphs to derive matrix results and translate these into special types of path. 1. Introduction. Graphical Markov