Towards sub-quadratic learning of probability density models in the form of mixtures of trees

We consider randomization schemes of the Chow-Liu algorithm from weak (bagging, of quadratic complexity) to strong ones (full random sampling, of linear complexity), for learning probability density models in the form of mixtures of Markov trees. Our empirical study on high-dimensional synthetic problems shows that, while bagging is the most accurate scheme on average, some of the stronger randomizations remain very competitive in terms of accuracy, specially for small sample sizes.