Method and apparatus for root cause and critical pattern prediction using virtual directed graphs

A non-transitory machine readable medium with instructions stored thereon for determining a causative event in an information technology infrastructure comprising:

• collecting historical event data with a computer;
• generating an undirected graph, each node being an event and each edge being a joint probability of two events historically occurring simultaneously;
• generating a directed graph, each node being the event and each edge being a conditional probability of a second event occurring if a first event occurs;
• reducing the undirected graph by discarding edges based on mutual information calculated for each each edge;
• reducing the directed graph by discarding edges that correspond to discarded edges of the undirected graph;
• and
• from the directed graph, creating and outputting an historical list of recommendations to a user, the historical list of recommendations comprising an at least one event deemed to be the most likely causative event.