disco: Perform Causal Discovery

In causalDisco: Tools for Causal Discovery on Observational Data

Perform Causal Discovery

Description

Apply a causal discovery method to a data frame to infer causal relationships on observational data. Supports multiple algorithms and optionally incorporates prior knowledge.

Usage

disco(data, method, knowledge = NULL)

Arguments

data	A data frame.
method	A disco_method object representing a causal discovery algorithm. Available methods are boss() - BOSS algorithm, boss_fci() - BOSS-FCI algorithm, fci() - FCI algorithm, gfci() - GFCI algorithm, ges() - GES algorithm, grasp() - GRaSP algorithm, grasp_fci() - GRaSP-FCI algorithm, gs() - GS algorithm, iamb(), iamb_fdr(), fast_iamb(), inter_iamb() - IAMB algorithms, pc() - PC algorithm, sp_fci() - SP-FCI algorithm, tfci() - TFCI algorithm, tges() - TGES algorithm, tpc() - TPC algorithm.
knowledge	A Knowledge object to be incorporated into the causal discovery algorithm. If NULL (default), the causal discovery algorithm is run without background knowledge. See knowledge() for how to create a Knowledge object.

Details

For specific details on the supported algorithms, scores, tests, and parameters for each engine, see:

• BnlearnSearch for bnlearn,

• CausalDiscoSearch for causalDisco,

• PcalgSearch for pcalg,

• TetradSearch for Tetrad.

Value

A Disco object (a list) containing the following components:

• knowledge A Knowledge object with the background knowledge used in the causal discovery algorithm.

• caugi A caugi::caugi object representing the learned causal graph from the causal discovery algorithm.

Examples

data(tpc_example)

# use pc with engine bnlearn and test fisher_z
my_pc <- pc(engine = "bnlearn", test = "fisher_z", alpha = 0.01)
pc_bnlearn <- disco(data = tpc_example, method = my_pc)
plot(pc_bnlearn)

# define tiered background knowledge
kn <- knowledge(
  tpc_example,
  tier(
    child ~ starts_with("child"),
    youth ~ starts_with("youth"),
    old ~ starts_with("old")
  )
)

# use gs with engine bnlearn and test cor and tiered background knowledge
my_pc_tiered <- pc(engine = "bnlearn", test = "cor", alpha = 0.01)
pc_tiered_bnlearn <- disco(
  data = tpc_example,
  method = my_pc_tiered,
  knowledge = kn
)
plot(pc_tiered_bnlearn)

causalDisco documentation built on April 13, 2026, 5:06 p.m.