The Complexity of Causality and Responsibility for Query Answers and non-Answers

Details The Complexity of Causality and Responsibility for Query Answers and non-Answers The Complexity of Causality and Responsibility for Query Answers and non-Answers

2010-09-10

arxiv.org/abs/1009.2021v2

Computer Science

Databases

15 pages, 12 figures, PVLDB 2011

Scientific paper

An answer to a query has a well-defined lineage expression (alternatively called how-provenance) that explains how the answer was derived. Recent work has also shown how to compute the lineage of a non-answer to a query. However, the cause of an answer or non-answer is a more subtle notion and consists, in general, of only a fragment of the lineage. In this paper, we adapt Halpern, Pearl, and Chockler's recent definitions of causality and responsibility to define the causes of answers and non-answers to queries, and their degree of responsibility. Responsibility captures the notion of degree of causality and serves to rank potentially many causes by their relative contributions to the effect. Then, we study the complexity of computing causes and responsibilities for conjunctive queries. It is known that computing causes is NP-complete in general. Our first main result shows that all causes to conjunctive queries can be computed by a relational query which may involve negation. Thus, causality can be computed in PTIME, and very efficiently so. Next, we study computing responsibility. Here, we prove that the complexity depends on the conjunctive query and demonstrate a dichotomy between PTIME and NP-complete cases. For the PTIME cases, we give a non-trivial algorithm, consisting of a reduction to the max-flow computation problem. Finally, we prove that, even when it is in PTIME, responsibility is complete for LOGSPACE, implying that, unlike causality, it cannot be computed by a relational query.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

The Complexity of Causality and Responsibility for Query Answers and non-Answers does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with The Complexity of Causality and Responsibility for Query Answers and non-Answers, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The Complexity of Causality and Responsibility for Query Answers and non-Answers will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-672554