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Im not completely sold on his book being a textbook. It is incredible bit of research, I agree, but it still has rough edges and should be treated as such, a w
by gabrielgoh 10y ago
Im not completely sold on his book being a textbook.
It is incredible bit of research, I agree, but it still has rough edges and should be treated as such, a work in progress. I do not think this book should be the bible of causality, and I think we're worse off for thinking it is.
Personally, I find the work of Richardson and Robins in Single World Intervention Graphs https://www.csss.washington.edu/Papers/wp128.pdf https://www.csss.washington.edu/Papers/wp128.pdf far more intuitive and compelling than Pearl's do-calculus. The notation is too slightly cleaner and it does away mostly with the unorthodox notation Pearl uses.
- s_ngularity 10y agoI would like to get an introduction to the main ideas in current causality research. Is Pearl's book still the best introduction, or would you recommend something else instead?
- johnmyleswhite 10y agoI think most people who study causal inference would say that Pearl's writing is seldom as clear as a person unfamiliar with his ideas would like it to be. These days, I suspect most people would benefit from starting with Morgan and Winship instead: https://www.amazon.com/Counterfactuals-Causal-Inference-Principles-Analytical/dp/0521671930 https://www.amazon.com/Counterfactuals-Causal-Inference-Prin... In addition to presenting Pearl's ideas more clearly than Pearl himself tends to do, Morgan and Winship also describe Rubin's work more fairly than Pearl does. (On the other hand, Rubin also tends to disparage Pearl's work more than is necessary.)