Graph Surgery and the Do-Operator: A Precise Correspondence for Acyclic Structural Causal Models

📅 2026-08-18
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🤖 AI Summary
该研究通过图手术和do-算子在确定性无环结构因果模型中建立了精确对应,解决了两者操作等价性的数学表述问题。
📝 Abstract
The $\operatorname{do}$-operator is described graphically by deleting arrows into its targets and functionally by replacing their mechanisms with constants. To call these operations equivalent is not yet a mathematical statement: one returns a graph and remembers only the targets, whereas the other returns mechanisms and also remembers the imposed values. We make a dependency-level comparison precise for deterministic acyclic structural causal models with finitely many endogenous variables. If $\operatorname{Graph}(F)$ extracts the dependencies of a mechanism family $F$, our main theorem is $\operatorname{Graph}(F^ι)=\operatorname{Surg}(\operatorname{Graph}(F),T_ι)$. Thus replacing target mechanisms removes exactly the dependencies removed by graph surgery. For a model $M=(G,F)$ whose graph may contain unused arrows, we characterize when the same equality holds with $G$ in place of $\operatorname{Graph}(F)$; it holds for every intervention exactly when $G$ records the dependencies of $F$ exactly. We then define the intervened model, characterize its run, show how sequential interventions combine, and prove that an outcome depends only on interventions at its actual dependency ancestors.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

do-operator
structural causal models
graph surgery
Innovation

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do-operator
graph surgery
structural causal models
dependency-level equivalence
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Satpreet Makhija
Ashoka University, Sonipat, India