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Causality and Causal Models: A Conceptual Perspective *
Author(s) -
Frosini Benito V.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
international statistical review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.051
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1751-5823
pISSN - 0306-7734
DOI - 10.1111/j.1751-5823.2006.tb00298.x
Subject(s) - spurious relationship , causality (physics) , causal inference , conditional independence , observational study , computer science , perspective (graphical) , independence (probability theory) , causal model , epistemology , econometrics , confounding , data science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , statistics , machine learning , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
Summary This paper aims at displaying a synthetic view of the historical development and the current research concerning causal relationships, starting from the Aristotelian doctrine of causes, following with the main philosophical streams until the middle of the twentieth century, and commenting on the present intensive research work in the statistical domain. The philosophical survey dwells upon various concepts of cause, and some attempts towards picking out spurious causes. Concerning statistical modelling, factorial models and directed acyclic graphs are examined and compared. Special attention is devoted to randomization and pseudo‐randomization (for observational studies) in view of avoiding the effect of possible confounders. An outline of the most common problems and pitfalls, encountered in modelling empirical data, closes the paper, with a warning to be very cautious in modelling and inferring conditional independence between variables.