The book of why : the new science of cause and effect / Judea Pearl and Dana MacKenzie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pearl, Judea, author.

Mackenzie, Dana, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Causation.

Inference.

Probabilities.

probability.

Physical Description:

x, 418 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Edition:

First trade paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Basic Books, 2020.

Summary:

"Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more 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.

Contents:

Mind over data

The ladder of causation

From buccaneers to guinea pigs: the genesis of causal inference

From evidence to causes: Reverend Bayes meets Mr. Holmes

Confounding and deconfounding: or, slaying the lurking variable

The smoke-filled debate: clearing the air

Paradoxes galore!

Beyond adjustment: the conquest of mount intervention

Counterfactuals: mining worlds that could have been

Mediation: the search for a mechanism

Big data, artificial intelligence, and the big questions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781541698963

1541698967

9780465097609

046509760X

OCLC:

1106172917