Causality

Judea Pearl

Sep 2009 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

Written by one of the preeminent researchers in the field, this book provides a comprehensive exposition of modern analysis of causation. It shows how causality has grown from a nebulous concept into a mathematical theory with significant applications in the fields of statistics, artificial intelligence, economics, philosophy, cognitive science, and the health and social sciences. Judea Pearl presents and unifies the probabilistic, manipulative, counterfactual, and structural approaches to causation and devises simple mathematical tools for studying the relationships between causal connections and statistical associations. The book will open the way for including causal analysis in the standard curricula of statistics, artificial intelligence, business, epidemiology, social sciences, and economics. Students in these fields will find natural models, simple inferential procedures, and precise mathematical definitions of causal concepts that traditional texts have evaded or made unduly complicated. The first edition of Causality has led to a paradigmatic change in the way that causality is treated in statistics, philosophy, computer science, social science, and economics. Cited in more than 5,000 scientific publications, it continues to liberate scientists from the traditional molds of statistical thinking. In this revised edition, Judea Pearl elucidates thorny issues, answers readers' questions, and offers a panoramic view of recent advances in this field of research. Causality will be of interests to students and professionals in a wide variety of fields. Anyone who wishes to elucidate meaningful relationships from data, predict effects of actions and policies, assess explanations of reported events, or form theories of causal understanding and causal speech will find this book stimulating and invaluable.

About the author

Judea Pearl is professor of computer science and statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he directs the Cognitive Systems Laboratory and conducts research in artificial intelligence, human reasoning, and philosophy of science. The author of Heuristics and Probabilistic Reasoning, he is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Founding Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Dr Pearl is the recipient of the IJCAI Research Excellence Award for 1999, the London School of Economics Lakatos Award for 2001, and the ACM Alan Newell Award for 2004. In 2008, he received the Franklin Medal for computer and cognitive science from the Franklin Institute.