The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect

Posted on 14 November 2018 by Judea Pearl

A Turing Award winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligence Correlation is not causation This mantra, chanted by scientists for than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk Today, that taboo is dead The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality the study of cause and effect on a firm scientific basis His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness Pearl s work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why. New Read [ The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect ] Author [ Judea Pearl ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr I had high hopes for this book I ve been interested in causal inference for a number of years, and I think it s an field that could drastically improve the practice of statistical science if its techniques became widely adopted A popular book on the field, written by one of its founders, seemed like an exciting development Finally, people would be talking about this stuff It would no longer be just another arcane heterodoxy, invoked by academic gadflies in seminar rooms and on blogs, I had high hopes for this book I ve been interested in causal inference for a number of years, and I think it s an field that could drastically improve the practice of statistical science if its techniques became widely adopted A popular book on the field, written by one of its founders, seemed like an exciting development Finally, people would be talking about this stuff It would no longer be just another arcane heterodoxy, invoked by academic gadflies in seminar rooms and on blogs, generating long back and forth arguments without changing orthodox practice The general public would be allowed into the debate, and that would mean a new kind of demand for undergraduate ...Failed revolutionIn an old joke, an engineer, a physicist and an economist are marooned on a desert island with canned food They are trying to figure out the best way to open the cans, and while the engineer and the physicist propose various mechanical schemes to get the job done, the economist says, Let s assume we have a can opener Judea Pearl s approach to causal inference brings that joke to mind His causal calculus begins with the premise, Let s assume we have a strong causal Failed revolutionIn an old joke, an engineer, a physicist and an economist are marooned on a desert island with canned food They are trying to figure out the best way to open the cans, and while the engineer and the physicist propose various mechanical schemes to get the job done, the economist says, Let s assume we have a can opener Judea Pearl s approach to causal inference brings that joke to mind His causal calculus begins with the premise, Let s assume we have a strong causal theory He shows that once you know the causal relations or lack thereof between relevant variables, you can use graphical methods to work out how to estimate the values of the parameters you are interested in But this puts the cart before the hors...I enjoyed this book It did everything a good book should do, it provides understandable examples, entertaining side notes, applications to the real world, something useful that is novel little known.The book could have been better 5 stars if it wasconcise, explained the general algorithms for mediation analysis, independence testing, transfer, explained the relationship of causal inference to calculus and spent less time on its whig history and adversarial narrative.I think I enjoyed this book It did everything a good book should do, it provides understandable examples, entertaining side notes, applications t...I ve never met Pearl, but having read a couple of his books, I m pretty sure he s an asshole His anger and bitterness comes through very clearly in his book he spends as much space naming and vilifying his professional enemies, both living and dead, as he does explaining his work This is a real shame, because his work is actually quite good and deserves a popular presentation sadly the sanctimony in this book is almost unbearable, and there is no humor to lighten it.Unfortunately I don t I ve never met Pearl, but having read a couple of his books, I m pretty sure he s an asshole His anger and bitterness comes through very clearly in his book he spends as much space naming and vilifying his professional enemies, both living and dead, as he does explaining his work This is a real shame, because his work is actually quite good and deserves a popular presentation sadly the sanctimony in this boo...There were some real flaws with this book that bothered me to no end I had no problem following his statistical examples and how to think about data analysis in the way the author suggests we all should I even enjoyed it when the author connected what he called Smart Artificial Intelligence to his overall causal theory, and I enjoyed the book when he alluded in passing to the importance of solving the P NP problem and how that would relate to what most people call super AI If we can model There were some real flaws with this book that bothered me to no end I had no problem following his statistical examples and how to think about data analysis in the way the author suggests we all should I even enjoyed it when the author connected what he called Smart Artificial Intelligence to his overall causal theory, and I enjoyed the book when he alluded in passing to the importance of solving the P NP problem and how that would relate to what most people call super AI If we can model completely the effect of a variable, we can get beyond the functional representation and understand the cause, that is, the why, the intentional or the intuition lying behind the variable of interest Or in other words, as the author wants to say correlation can show cau...This review is for the audio version This topic is very interesting but audio is a terrible format for this book The narrator is reading out equations The whole point of the book is to use diagrams There is a PDF with the audiobook, but the figures are not meaningful on their own I have ordered the print version If that makes sense, I will bump up the rating for that.There were important things I just didn t understand clearly For example, he seems to be bashing Sir Austin Bradford Hill, This review is for the audio version This topic is very interesting but audio is a terrible format for this book The narrator is reading out equations The whole point of the book is to use diagrams There is a PDF with the audiobook, but the figures are not meaningful on their own I have ordered the print version If that makes sense, I will bump up the rating for that.There were important things I just didn t understand clearly For example, he seems to be bashing Sir Austin Bradford Hill, saying that the way epidemiologists figured out that smoking causes lung cancer is somehow pathetic compared with his approach The Hill approach saved millions of lives What was wrong with it What is the equivalent accomplishment of his little arrows He says Hill wasn t quantitative, but that s not really true because the Hill Criteria include magnitude of effec...This is an engaging, well articulated discussion of causal inference what it is, what the available tools are RCTs, IVs, matching, etc , how they have changed over the years, and how they could be improved The bits that tell the history of causal inference are especially illuminating I learned a lot of stats in grad school but very little about the struggles and accidents that produced the tools I learned Pearl helps put much of that into context.Now, Pearl s intended audience is clearly This is an engaging, well articulated discussion of causal inference what it is, what the available tools are RCTs, IVs, matching, etc , how they have changed over the years, and how they could be improved The bits that tell the history of causal inference are especially illuminating I learned a lot of stats in grad school but very little about the struggles and accidents that produced the...Here is an excellent book by a renowned expert but potentially with deep fundamental flaws and conclusions The reviewer islikely mistaken in these views given that the author is clearly a master thinker on the subject a point worth noting for any soul wading through this long review Much of this review is hardly a book review as it isabout the argument gaps this reviewer sees in the author s epistemological framework rather than the book itself.Before my disagreements with some Here is an excellent book by a renowned expert but potentially with deep fundamental flaws and conclusions The reviewer islikely mistaken in these views given that the author is clearly a master thinker on the subject a point worth noting for any soul wading through this long review Much of this review is hardly a book review as it isabout the argument gaps this reviewer sees in the author s epistemological framework rather than the book itself.Before my disagreements with some of the basic premises mentioned in the book, a few words on the book itself The author covers a lot of important topics which are barely ever mentioned in popular books.Through confounders, colliders, mediators, the author passionately and patiently explains the nuances of good statistical analysis The author is a renowned innovator himself his pioneering ideas have helped many f...There are great ideas in this book I m not an expert on causality or statistics, but I found the idea of modeling causality using a directed graph, and using that graph as a tool for both a determining valid controls in experimental data and b performing counterfactual reasoning to be thoughtful and probably useful I have little doubt that Pearl s contributions to the sciences will prove to be important and useful But I have a hard time endorsing this book I recognize I m in the minority There are great ideas in this book I m not an expert on causality or statistics, but I found the idea of modeling causality using a directed graph, and using that graph as a tool for ...My son George s first language is Japanese His first annoying habit, which raised its head very soon after he was granted the gift of speech, was to answer every request question casual comment with doshte Doshte, you guessed it, is Japanese for why This, Judea Pearl argues very persuasively in this book, is for the time being the biggest difference between thinking men and thinking machines.I LOVED this book Loved it, loved it, loved it.You can read The Book of Why as a My son George s first language is Japanese His first annoying habit, which raised its head very soon after he was granted the gift of speech, was to answer every request question casual comment with doshte Doshte, you guessed...

The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect

14 November 2018

Judea Pearl