I read it about 5 years ago. It was an interesting experience, because in my area (operations management) no one was using that kind of approach, and I felt quite skeptical. The author's style and tone was one of the reasons for it -- I am not used to such assertiveness in writing. However, soon after that I started working closer to an ITM department, and everyone was talking about "mediation effects" and "causal modeling", though I have not yet seen formulas "do-calculus".
One of my favorite parts of the book was the cause-of-fire example: "the fire wouldn't have happened if someone didn't light the match" vs. "the fire wouldn't have happened if the house didn't have oxygen in it". It illustrates nicely how ambiguous the idea of cause and effect is, especially when it comes to placing the blame.
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Yulia Vorotyntseva
Saint Louis University
St Louis MO
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2023 15:20
From: Jill Capello
Subject: INFORMS Book Club - Have you started reading "The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect"?
The next INFORMS Book Club meeting will be held on Thursday, February 23rd at 1:00 ET. Have you started reading the book yet? If so, what do you think? Have an opinion you'd like to share with the group or a topic you'd like to discuss? Please post it here! And in case you haven't registered yet, here is the link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0ldeqqpj4qGtV-2In4G-NqQrv_57Codne2
Look forward to seeing everyone on February 23rd!
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Jill Capello
Membership Associate
INFORMS
Catonsville MD
jcapello@informs.org
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