Minimal sufficient adjustment set 2026-09-28
A minimal sufficient adjustment set is a sufficient adjustment set none of whose proper subsets is sufficient. Minimality is by set inclusion and does not imply minimum cardinality or uniqueness.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2022 iii Paper 221 1 ii Solution 2026-09-28
Among observed pretreatment variables, every sufficient set must contain to blockand to blockConditioning on opens the collider onso must also be included. The resulting minimal sufficient adjustment set isIt blocks every path from to that remains after removing , while the open pathpreserves instrument relevance. Adding blocks no required relevance path, sois also sufficient.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 iii Paper 221 3 iv Solution 2026-09-28
Let be a Markov blanket of the treatment inside , and write the remaining adjustment variables as . By definition,The sufficiency of givesApply the contraction axiom for conditional independence with first variable , second variable , third variable , and conditioning variable . It givesThe decomposition axiom for conditional independence then yields . Hence every Markov blanket of in is itself a sufficient adjustment set.