If D-separation and conditional independence are equivalent for a Directed acyclic graph, its moral graph is its conditional independence graph. After conditioning on all other vertices, an active path can only be a direct edge or a two-edge collider through a common child: two adjacent interior vertices cannot both be colliders. These are exactly the moral edges.
For the undirected representation of the pedigree graphical model, take the moral graph: remove arrowheads from all parent-child edges and join coparents. The added coparent edges are
Every Mendelian segregation factor involves a child and its two parents, so its variables form a clique in this graph. The product in the previous part is thus an undirected factorization. A separation of variables by a conditioning set in this graph implies the corresponding conditional independence.
This is a valid conditional independence graph representation of the joint genotype law. It need not be its minimal representation without a faithfulness of a directed acyclic graph assumption: some inheritance probabilities are zero, and special parameter choices can yield additional independences. It also differs from a graph of unconditioned correlations, since full siblings remain correlated through their parents when the parental genotypes are not conditioned on.
The moral graph of a Directed acyclic graph is formed by joining any two parents of a common child and then removing the directions from all edges. For D-separation, a path in the underlying undirected graph is active given when every noncollider on it is outside , and every collider has itself or a descendant in . Disjoint vertex sets and are D-separated by if no such active path connects them.
The adjacency characterization is
A one-edge path cannot be blocked by conditioning on other vertices. For a nonadjacent pair, choose the later vertex in a topological ordering. The earlier vertex is a nondescendant and is not a parent of , so the parents of separate the pair by the local Markov property of a directed acyclic graph.
Use faithfulness of a directed acyclic graph to mean that graphical and probabilistic independences agree, for all disjoint sets:
This includes the global Markov property of a directed acyclic graph as well as the absence of extra independences. The conditional independence graph of is the undirected graph in which is absent exactly when .
To identify this graph, condition on every vertex other than . Any noncollider in the interior of a path is then conditioned on, so an active path must have only colliders internally. Two adjacent interior vertices cannot both be colliders: the arrow joining them has an arrowhead at only one of its ends. Thus an active path can have no interior vertex, giving a direct edge, or just one, giving . In the latter case the conditioned common child activates the path. These possibilities are exactly the edges added or retained by moralization. Faithfulness therefore proves
This is why the moral graph equals the conditional independence graph under faithfulness.
For Gaussian graph estimation, collect the data into an matrix and let . The precision matrix has precisely for absent graph edges, by Gaussian conditional independence. In neighbourhood selection, fit a Lasso regression of each column on the others:
Select the nonzero coefficients as neighbours of , then make the graph undirected using either the OR rule, retaining an edge selected in at least one regression, or the AND rule, requiring both. These are instances of Nodewise Lasso.
The Graphical Lasso estimates the whole precision matrix jointly, for example by
Read off its nonzero off-diagonal entries as graph edges. This expression uses an off-diagonal penalty; an all-entry penalty is another convention.
To reduce computation in the PC algorithm, start its skeleton search from an estimate of the conditional independence graph rather than the complete graph. The exact graph contains the true DAG skeleton, so oracle tests can remove its extra edges while retaining the true adjacencies. Fewer initial edges and smaller neighbourhoods reduce both candidate pairs and candidate conditioning sets.
For correctness of the orientation stage, preserve valid separating-set records. With an exact conditional independence graph, an initially absent pair has the full complement as a separating set. Record that set, and record the usual discovered sets for edges removed later. Leaving an initially absent pair with an empty default could falsely mark an unshielded noncollider as a collider. This describes PC initialization from a conditional independence graph; with an estimated initial graph, screening errors can propagate into the output.
A density factorizes according to a Directed acyclic graph when
where is the set of parents of vertex .
The required undirected graph is the moral graph: join every pair of parents having a common child, retain the parent-child adjacencies, and remove all arrowheads. Each DAG family is then a clique, so each conditional factor is a clique potential and the DAG factorization is also an undirected factorization. These edges are minimal for a guarantee covering every DAG-factorizing density, because an arbitrary conditional factor can couple every pair of variables in its family.
Each factor depends only on node and its parents. Those vertices form a clique in the moral graph, because moralization joins every pair of parents and removes arrow directions. The positive joint density therefore factors into clique potentials of the moral graph. The Hammersley-Clifford theorem then implies the global Markov property for that undirected graph.
Initialize the PC skeleton search with an estimated conditional independence graph to reduce candidate pairs and conditioning sets. An exact graph contains the true Directed acyclic graph skeleton because it equals its moral graph under faithfulness. For initially absent pairs record the full complement as a separating set; an empty default can create false collider orientations. Estimation errors can affect this screening step.
Pedigree graphical model 2026-10-14
Assign one genotype random variable to each person in a pedigree. Independent founders in a pedigree carry population genotype laws, and each other genotype has its conditional distribution given its two parents from Mendelian segregation. The ancestry Directed acyclic graph is a Bayesian network for the joint genotype law. Its moral graph contains each parent-child edge and each coparent edge. Each founder factor and each child-with-parents factor belongs to a clique, giving an undirected graphical representation. The graph is an independence representation; equality with the minimal conditional independence graph needs additional faithfulness assumptions, particularly because inheritance can produce zero probabilities.