Improved Local Search with Momentum for Bayesian Networks Structure Learning

Bayesian Networks structure learning (BNSL) is a troublesome problem that aims to search for an optimal structure. An exact search tends to sacrifice a significant amount of time and memory to promote accuracy, while the local search can tackle complex networks with thousands of variables but commonly gets stuck in a local optimum. In this paper, two novel and practical operators and a derived operator are proposed to perturb structures and maintain the acyclicity. Then, we design a framework, incorporating an influential perturbation factor integrated by three proposed operators, to escape current local optimal and improve the dilemma that outcomes trap in local optimal. The experimental results illustrate that our algorithm can output competitive results compared with the state-of-the-art constraint-based method in most cases. Meanwhile, our algorithm reaches an equivalent or better solution found by the state-of-the-art exact search and hybrid methods.