---
title: "Learning Optimal Bayesian Networks Using A* Search"
authors:
  - "Changhe Yuan"
  - "Brandon M. Malone"
  - "XiaoJian Wu"
doi: "10.5591/978-1-57735-516-8/IJCAI11-364"
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2011/364"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2011/0364.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2011
pages: "2186-2190"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Learning Optimal Bayesian Networks Using A* Search

Changhe Yuan, Brandon M. Malone, XiaoJian Wu

*Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 2186-2190. DOI: [10.5591/978-1-57735-516-8/IJCAI11-364](https://doi.org/10.5591/978-1-57735-516-8/IJCAI11-364)

## Abstract

This paper formulates learning optimal Bayesian network as a shortest path finding problem. An A* search algorithm is introduced to solve the problem. With the guidance of a consistent heuristic, the algorithm learns an optimal Bayesian networkby only searching the most promising parts of the solution space. Empirical results show that the A*search algorithm significantly improves the time and space efficiency of existing methods on a set of benchmark datasets.