On the Number of Samples Needed to Learn the Correct Structure of a Bayesian Network

Bayesian Networks (BNs) are useful tools giving a natural and compact representation of joint probability distributions. In many applications one needs to learn a Bayesian Network (BN) from data. In this context, it is important to understand the number of samples needed in order to guarantee a successful learning. Previous works have studied BNs sample complexity, yet they mainly focused on the requirement that the learned distribution will be close to the original distribution which generated the data. In this work, we study a different aspect of the learning task, namely the number of samples needed in order to learn the correct structure of the network. We give both asymptotic results (lower and upper-bounds) on the probability of learning a wrong structure, valid in the large sample limit, and experimental results, demonstrating the learning behavior for feasible sample sizes.