The book of why – Judea Pearl - Review
Am reminded of my master’s degree in finance that I had pursed back in 2009-10, one of the key problems that we had always tried to solve was the quantifiable impact of a bunch of variables on the price of a stock. Irrespective of the number of variables that were infused into an equation, there was always an element ‘X’ which was basically an unknown variable that also contributes to the price movement. Judea Pearl uses the term confounder instead of ‘X’ but the fundamental point remains the same. In a cause-effect equation, we have not come to a position wherein the exact cause of effect can be fully explained or pointed to a definite cause. However, with a large sample in place we can state with a certain degree of confidence that can pinpoint the reasons of occurrences. I was surprised to note that even smoking – cancer kind of cause-effect equations has taken three to four decades of debate before arriving at a concrete conclusion. The reason drives down to the fact that...