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

Abstract

Judea Pearl is on a mission to change the way we interpret data. An eminent Professor of Computer Science, Pearl has documented his research and opinions in scholarly books and papers. Now, he has made his ideas accessible to a broad audience in The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect, co-authored with science writer Dana Mackenzie. With the release of this historically grounded and thought provoking book, Pearl leaps from the ivory tower into the real world. The Book of Why takes aim at perceived limitations of observational studies, whose underlying data are found in nature and not controlled by researchers. Many believe that an observational study can elucidate association but not cause and effect. It cannot tell you why. Perhaps the most famous example concerns the impact of smoking on health. By the mid 1950s, researchers had established a strong association