Search for: All records

The logic of Dependence and Independence Bunched Implications (DIBI) is a logic to reason about conditional independence (CI); for instance, DIBI formulas can characterise CI in discrete probability distributions and in relational databases, using a probabilistic DIBI model and a similarly-constructed relational model. Despite the similarity of the two models, there lacks a uniform account. As a result, the laborious case-by-case verification of the frame conditions required for constructing new models hinders them from generalising the results to CI in other useful models such that continuous distribution. In this paper, we develop an abstract framework for systematically constructing DIBI models, using category theory as the unifying mathematical language. We show that DIBI models arise from arbitrary symmetric monoidal categories with copy-discard structure. In particular, we use string diagrams - a graphical presentation of monoidal categories - to give a uniform definition of the parallel composition and subkernel relation in DIBI models. Our approach not only generalises known models, but also yields new models of interest and reduces properties of DIBI models to structures in the underlying categories. Furthermore, our categorical framework enables a comparison between string diagrammatic approaches to CI in the literature and a logical notion of CI, defined in terms of the satisfaction of specific DIBI formulas. We show that the logical notion is an extension of string diagrammatic CI under reasonable conditions.