"A rooster crow does not cause the sun to rise, even though it always preceded the sun."
Book 55: 'The Book of Why: The new science of Cause and Effect' by Judea Pearl & Dan Mackenzie. This book was one of my most challenging reads this year. Although recommended by several accounts online, I found the majority of it hard to follow. In addition, you need a firm grounding in both maths and statistics to realise the value of this book.
At a high level, the author argues that there are three distinct levels of cognitive ability: seeing, doing and imagining. Unfortunately, a lot of times, humans oversimplify cause and effect. This book helps you to identify confounders and mediators and ask more intelligent questions. It also looks at ways to apply counterfactuals to answer questions like what would have happened to Y if X had never happened. My biggest takeaway is to not jump to conclusions when you hear cause and effect statements but instead slow down and think about all the variables involved.
What book were you reading this weekend?
Book 55: 'The Book of Why: The new science of Cause and Effect' by Judea Pearl & Dan Mackenzie. This book was one of my most challenging reads this year. Although recommended by several accounts online, I found the majority of it hard to follow. In addition, you need a firm grounding in both maths and statistics to realise the value of this book.
At a high level, the author argues that there are three distinct levels of cognitive ability: seeing, doing and imagining. Unfortunately, a lot of times, humans oversimplify cause and effect. This book helps you to identify confounders and mediators and ask more intelligent questions. It also looks at ways to apply counterfactuals to answer questions like what would have happened to Y if X had never happened. My biggest takeaway is to not jump to conclusions when you hear cause and effect statements but instead slow down and think about all the variables involved.
What book were you reading this weekend?
