Uncertainty Quantification for Inferring Hawkes Networks

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 33 (NeurIPS 2020)

AuthorFeedback Bibtex MetaReview Paper Review Supplemental

Authors

Haoyun Wang, Liyan Xie, Alex Cuozzo, Simon Mak, Yao Xie

Abstract

Multivariate Hawkes processes are commonly used to model streaming networked event data in a wide variety of applications. However, it remains a challenge to extract reliable inference from complex datasets with uncertainty quantification. Aiming towards this, we develop a statistical inference framework to learn causal relationships between nodes from networked data, where the underlying directed graph implies Granger causality. We provide uncertainty quantification for the maximum likelihood estimate of the network multivariate Hawkes process by providing a non-asymptotic confidence set. The main technique is based on the concentration inequalities of continuous-time martingales. We compare our method to the previously-derived asymptotic Hawkes process confidence interval, and demonstrate the strengths of our method in an application to neuronal connectivity reconstruction.