Computing Unique Information for Poisson and Multinomial Systems

Abstract: Bivariate Partial Information Decomposition (PID) describes how the mutual information between a random variable M and two random variables Y and Z is decomposed into unique, redundant, and synergistic terms. Recently, PID has shown promise as an emerging tool to understand biological systems and biases in machine learning. However, computing PID is a challenging problem as it typically involves optimizing over distributions. In this work, we study the problem of computing PID in two systems: the Poisson system inspired by the 'ideal Poisson channel' and the multinomial system inspired by multinomial thinning, for a scalar M. We provide sufficient conditions for both systems under which closed-form expressions for many operationally-motivated PID can be obtained, thereby allowing us to easily compute PID for these systems. Our proof consists of showing that one of the unique information terms is zero, which allows the remaining unique, redundant, and synergistic terms to be easily computed using only the marginal and the joint mutual information.