'The Book of Why' by Judea Pearl

The Book of Why, Judea Pearl (2.0)

I can’t say that I enjoyed reading this book, though it did bring up some thoughtful questions about how causes and effects are treated in science, specifically by statisticians. Unfortunately, the author has such a high opinion of his own work; the book read as largely a pat on his back. He summarizes theme of the book as ‘you are smarter than your data, data doesn’t understand causes’. While this is true, the act of determining causes is mostly fraught with assumption. The author tends to prove his point by using hindsight, which, by definition, has fewer assumptions. In the book, he unveils his ‘simple’ way of writing causal diagrams (90% of which were simple triangles) that clarify how these causes are involved with the effect. Given that the book was touted as written for non-statisticians and non-computer scientists, I wish he would have included more real life examples to prove his points and less time spent on the math.