causal-profiler 0.1.1

A Synthetic Benchmark Generator for Causal Machine Learning

CausalProfiler

Paper:

CausalProfiler is a synthetic benchmark generator for evaluating Causal ML methods under diverse conditions and assumptions. It allows rigorous, reproducible comparisons by sampling Structural Causal Models, data, and causal queries from user-defined Spaces of Interest, with built-in coverage guarantees.

Installation

For Users (Recommended)

Install directly from PyPI:

pip install causal_profiler

For Developers

We recommend using uv for development:

uv venv --python 3.12
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"

This installs the package in editable mode along with all development dependencies (pytest, tox, pandas, scipy, statsmodels, networkx).

Alternatively, you can use pip:

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Additional Dependencies for Examples

If you plan to use the provided example evaluate.py file, install the examples dependencies:

uv pip install -e ".[examples]"
# or with pip:
pip install -e ".[examples]"

This includes: pyyaml, pandas, matplotlib, seaborn.

Project Configuration

The pyproject.toml file defines the project dependencies and optional dependency groups:

• Main dependencies: numpy, torch (required for core functionality)
• Dev dependencies ([dev]): pytest, tox, pandas, scipy, statsmodels, networkx (for testing and development)
• Examples dependencies ([examples]): pyyaml, pandas, matplotlib, seaborn (for running evaluation examples)

You can install specific dependency groups using:

uv pip install -e ".[dev,examples]"  # Install both dev and examples dependencies

Usage Example:

To help you get started, we provide a full example in examples/evaluation/:

1. spaces.yaml - Configuration file defining the spaces of interest to evaluate
2. evaluate.py - Script to run evaluations for a specific method
3. summarize_results.py - Script to analyze and visualize results from multiple methods

In this evaluate.py example we demonstrate how to:

• Load benchmark settings from a config file
• Set random seeds for reproducibility
• Run your causal method on multiple synthetic structural causal models (SCMs)
• Measure and log error, failure rate, and runtime
• Save results for later analysis
• Analyze the results

We've added a 🔧 EDIT note on everything one needs to change to use the example with their own method.

1. Replace dummy MyCausalMethod

In evaluate.py, replace from my_causal_method import MyCausalMethod with your own model. Please do check the 🔧 EDIT notes in evaluate.py to make sure your method is compatible.

2. Configure Your Space of Interests

In examples/evaluation/spaces.yaml, you can define multiple test spaces with different characteristics:

spaces:
  - name: linear_low_noise
    number_of_nodes: [5, 10]
    mechanism_family: LINEAR
    noise_distribution: GAUSSIAN
    noise_args: [0, 0.5]
    ...
    seed_list: [42, 43, 44]

Each space defines parameters for generating causal graphs, data, and queries. The framework properly handles ranges specified as lists (e.g., [5, 8]) by converting them to tuples.

3. Run the Evaluation

Once configured, run the evaluation script:

python evaluate.py --config spaces.yaml --output_dir results/method1

• --config: Path to the configuration file
• --output_dir: Directory to save results
• --num_runs: Number of runs per seed (different datasets)
• --num_tries: Number of tries per run (repeated estimations)
• --wandb: Enable logging to Weights & Biases (optional)

This will:

• Log progress to the terminal and log.txt
• Save individual run results as JSON
• Store a full summary.json in the output directory

The evaluation structure uses a nested loop approach:

for each seed:
  for each run:
    Generate a new dataset and queries
    for each try:
      Estimate queries
      Calculate error
    Calculate average error for the run

This structure captures both:

• Variability between different causal graphs (runs)
• Stability of method performance for the same graph (tries)

4. Analyze the Results

To analyze and compare your results, use the summary script:

python summarize_results.py results/method1 results/method2 --output_dir analysis/

This will:

1. Load all result files from the specified directories
2. Compute statistics at different levels (try, run, overall)
3. Generate CSV summaries and visualizations

Output Files

• summary.csv: Overall method performance by space
• run_summary.csv: Run-level statistics
• tries_data.csv: All individual try data
• Visualization plots:
  • error_boxplot.png: Error distribution by method and space
  • runtime_boxplot.png: Runtime distribution by space
  • run_variability.png: Error variability across runs

File Structure Overview

evaluate.py                 # Main evaluation script
summarize_results.py        # Summary + plotting script
spaces.yaml                 # Config file for SCM/query spaces
results/
  method1/                  # Output directory for method 1
    result_*.json
    log.txt
    summary.json
analysis/
  summary.csv
  error_boxplot.png
  runtime_boxplot.png

Testing

The tests directory mirrors the structure of src and hosts all tests. To run tests:

pytest -s --ignore=tests/test_scm_sampling_performance.py # Run all tests
pytest tests/test_space_of_interest.py # Runs all tests in test_space_of_interest.py
pytest tests/test_space_of_interest.py::TestSpaceOfInterest::test_number_of_data_points # Runs a specific test function

Running Tests Across Multiple Python Versions

We use tox (included in dev dependencies) to test across multiple Python versions (3.10-3.14). To run tox:

# Run tests on all supported Python versions
tox

# Run all functionality tests (excluding the performance test)
tox -e py312  # or any specific Python version: py310, py311, py312, py313, py314

# Run all tests including benchmarking
tox -e slow

Note: You'll need the respective Python versions installed on your system for tox to work.

Verification experiments

Validates that our implementation correctly adheres to Pearl's Causal Hierarchy. Each verification experiment runs across a --parameter-grid and reports detailed results (the tables Appendix J of the paper). Note: Install dev dependencies (uv pip install -e ".[dev]") before running verification experiments.

Level 1: Associations (Statistics)

Verifies that d-separations in the graph imply conditional independence.

python verification/main.py \
    --parameter-grid test8 \
    --verifications-to-run l1_data_ci \
    --output-dir verification/L1

Level 2: Interventions (Do-calculus)

Verifies compliance with Pearl's three rules of do-calculus.

python verification/main.py \
    --parameter-grid test7 \
    --verifications-to-run l2_do_calculus \
    --output-dir verification/L2

Level 3: Counterfactuals (Structural)

Verifies compliance with the three structural counterfactual axioms.

python verification/main.py \
    --parameter-grid test5 \
    --verifications-to-run l3_structural_counterfactual_axioms \
    --output-dir verification/L3