Abstract
Classical dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs) are based on the homogeneous Markov assumption
and cannot deal with heterogeneity and non-stationarity in temporal processes. Various approaches to relax
the homogeneity assumption have recently been proposed. The present paper presents a combination of a
Bayesian network with conditional probabilities in the linear Gaussian family, and a Bayesian multiple
change-point process, where the number and location of the change-points are sampled from the posterior
distribution with MCMC. Our work improves four aspects of an earlier conference paper: it contains
a comprehensive and self-contained exposition of the methodology; it discusses the problem of spurious
feedback loops in network reconstruction; it contains a comprehensive comparative evaluation of the network
reconstruction accuracy on a set of synthetic and real-world benchmark problems, based on a novel discrete
change-point process; and it suggests new and improved MCMC schemes for sampling both the network
structures and the change-point configurations from the posterior distribution. The latter study compares
RJMCMC, based on change-point birth and death moves, with two dynamic programming schemes that were
originally devised for Bayesian mixture models. We demonstrate the modifications that have to be made to
allow for changing network structures, and the critical impact that the prior distribution on change-point
configurations has on the overall computational complexity.
Year
2011
Category
Refereed journal