Probabilistic causes in Markov chains

Abstract

The paper studies a probabilistic notion of causes in Markov chains that relies on the counterfactuality principle and the probability-raising property. This notion is motivated by the use of causes for monitoring purposes where the aim is to detect faulty or undesired behaviours before they actually occur. A cause is a set of finite executions of the system after which the probability of the effect exceeds a given threshold. We introduce multiple types of costs that capture the consumption of resources from different perspectives, and study the complexity of computing cost-minimal causes.