Formalizing and falsifying causal pathways of rare events

2026-05-29

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of providing causal explanations for rare events (outliers) by formally defining causal paths and establishing their testable conditions. Building upon structural equation models, it uniquely integrates causal paths with the theory of causal abstraction, enabling verification that relies solely on pathways relevant to the rare event rather than requiring a complete causal graph. This approach bridges the gap between intuitive causal explanations and rigorous modeling, thereby constructing a causal abstraction framework tailored to rare events and supporting formal validation of root cause analysis results.

Abstract

Building on recent formalizations of root cause analysis for rare events (``outliers'') in structural equation models, we propose a formal definition of a causal pathway and discuss its testable implications. We identify conditions under which these implications depend only on a causal abstraction defined by the pathway of rare events, rather than on the full causal graph of the underlying system. Accordingly, we introduce an abstraction of causal structure to pathways of rare events that bridges simple verbal causal explanations and detailed causal modeling.

Problem

• causal pathway
• rare events
• causal abstraction
• structural equation models
• root cause analysis

Innovation

• causal pathway
• rare events
• causal abstraction
• structural equation models
• root cause analysis