Approximate Lifted Model Construction

Probabilistic relational models such as parametric factor graphs enable efficient (lifted) inference by exploiting the indistinguishability of objects. In lifted inference, a representative of indistinguishable objects is used for computations. To obtain a relational (i.e., lifted) representation, the Advanced Colour Passing (ACP) algorithm is the state of the art. The ACP algorithm, however, requires underlying distributions, encoded as potential-based factorisations, to exactly match to identify and exploit indistinguishabilities. Hence, ACP is unsuitable for practical applications where potentials learned from data inevitably deviate even if associated objects are indistinguishable. To mitigate this problem, we introduce the varepsilon-Advanced Colour Passing (varepsilon-ACP) algorithm, which allows for a deviation of potentials depending on a hyperparameter varepsilon. varepsilon-ACP efficiently uncovers and exploits indistinguishabilities that are not exact. We prove that the approximation error induced by varepsilon-ACP is strictly bounded and our experiments show that the approximation error is close to zero in practice.