JANUS: Structured Bidirectional Generation for Guaranteed Constraints and Analytical Uncertainty
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Abstract (arXiv)
High-stakes synthetic data generation faces a fundamental Quadrilemma: achieving Fidelity to the original distribution, Control over complex logical constraints, Reliability in uncertainty estimation, and Efficiency in computational cost -- simultaneously. State-of-the-art Deep Generative Models (CTGAN, TabDDPM) excel at fidelity but rely on inefficient rejection sampling for continuous range constraints. Conversely, Structural Causal Models offer logical control but struggle with high-dimensional fidelity and complex noise inversion. We introduce JANUS (Joint Ancestral Network for Uncertainty and Synthesis), a framework that unifies these capabilities using a DAG of Bayesian Decision Trees. Our key innovation is Reverse-Topological Back-filling, an algorithm that propagates constraints backwards through the causal graph, achieving 100% constraint satisfaction on feasible constraint sets without rejection sampling. This is paired with an Analytical Uncertainty Decomposition derived from Dirichlet priors, enabling 128x faster uncertainty estimation than Monte Carlo methods. Across 15 datasets and 523 constrained scenarios, JANUS achieves state-of-the-art fidelity (Detection Score 0.497), eliminates mode collapse on imbalanced data, and provides exact handling of complex inter-column constraints (e.g., Salary_offered >= Salary_requested) where baselines fail entirely.
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References · 24
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- 2021Bias in Machine Learning Software: Why? How? What to do?cited by 93
- 2022Diffusion Causal Models for Counterfactual Estimationcited by 87
- 2023Synthcity: facilitating innovative use cases of synthetic data in different data modalitiescited by 76
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- 2021VACA: Design of Variational Graph Autoencoders for Interventional and Counterfactual Queriescited by 19
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- 2023Evidential Deep Learning: Enhancing Predictive Uncertainty Estimation for Earth System Science Applicationscited by 11
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- 2022Generation and Simulation of Synthetic Datasets with Copulascited by 8
- 2022Differential Privacy Made Easycited by 4
- 2024Generation and analysis of synthetic data via Bayesian networks: a robust approach for uncertainty quantification via Bayesian paradigmcited by 2
- 2024Bayesian CART models for aggregate claim modelingcited by 1
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