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

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

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

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

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Overview

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 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781541698963
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication date: 08/25/2020
Pages: 432
Sales rank: 126,194
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.25(d)

About the Author

Judea Pearl is a professor of computer science at UCLA. The author of three books, he has won numerous awards, including the Alan Turing Award. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Dana Mackenzie is a PhD mathematician turned science writer and has written for Science, New Scientist, and Scientific American, among others. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction Mind over Data 1

Chapter 1 The Ladder of Causation 23

Chapter 2 From Buccaneers to Guinea Pigs: The Genesis of Causal Inference 53

Chapter 3 From Evidence to Causes: Reverend Bayes Meets Mr. Holmes 93

Chapter 4 Confounding and Deconfounding: Or, Slaying the Lurking Variable 135

Chapter 5 The Smoke-Filled Debate: Clearing the Air 167

Chapter 6 Paradoxes Galore! 189

Chapter 7 Beyond Adjustment: The Conquest of Mount Intervention 219

Chapter 8 Counterfactuals: Mining Worlds That Could Have Been 259

Chapter 9 Mediation: The Search for a Mechanism 299

Chapter 10 Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and the Big Questions 349

Acknowledgments 371

Notes 373

Bibliography 377

Index 405

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