Counting and Sampling Markov Equivalent Directed Acyclic Graphs

Abstract

Exploring directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) in a Markov equivalence class is pivotal to infer causal effects or to discover the causal DAG via appropriate interventional data. We consider counting and uniform sampling of DAGs that are Markov equivalent to a given DAG. These problems efficiently reduce to counting the moral acyclic orientations of a given undirected connected chordal graph on n vertices, for which we give two algorithms. Our first algorithm requires O(2nn4) arithmetic operations, improving a previous superexponential upper bound. The second requires O(k!2kk2n) operations, where k is the size of the largest clique in the graph; for bounded-degree graphs this bound is linear in n. After a single run, both algorithms enable uniform sampling from the equivalence class at a computational cost linear in the graph size. Empirical results indicate that our algorithms are superior to previously presented algorithms over a range of inputs; graphs with hundreds of vertices and thousands of edges are processed in a second on a desktop computer.