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Causation, Prediction, and Search: Global Challenges to Social Theory
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Causation, Prediction, and Search: Global Challenges to Social Theory Hardcover - 2001

by Peter Spirtes; Clark Glymour; Richard Scheines


From the publisher

What assumptions and methods allow us to turn observations into causal knowledge, and how can even incomplete causal knowledge be used in planning and prediction to influence and control our environment? In this book Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour, and Richard Scheines address these questions using the formalism of Bayes networks, with results that have been applied in diverse areas of research in the social, behavioral, and physical sciences.

The authors show that although experimental and observational study designs may not always permit the same inferences, they are subject to uniform principles. They axiomatize the connection between causal structure and probabilistic independence, explore several varieties of causal indistinguishability, formulate a theory of manipulation, and develop asymptotically reliable procedures for searching over equivalence classes of causal models, including models of categorical data and structural equation models with and without latent variables.

The authors show that the relationship between causality and probability can also help to clarify such diverse topics in statistics as the comparative power of experimentation versus observation, Simpson's paradox, errors in regression models, retrospective versus prospective sampling, and variable selection.

The second edition contains a new introduction and an extensive survey of advances and applications that have appeared since the first edition was published in 1993.

Details

  • Title Causation, Prediction, and Search: Global Challenges to Social Theory
  • Author Peter Spirtes; Clark Glymour; Richard Scheines
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition Second edition
  • Pages 568
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Bradford Book, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
  • Date January 8, 2001
  • Illustrated Yes
  • ISBN 9780262194402 / 0262194406
  • Weight 2.66 lbs (1.21 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.29 x 7.28 x 1.42 in (23.60 x 18.49 x 3.61 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Mathematical statistics
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 00026266
  • Dewey Decimal Code 519.5