The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect - Hardcover

Pearl, Judea; Mackenzie, Dana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 046509760X ISBN 13: 9780465097609

Publisher: Basic Books, 2018

Synopsis

A Turing Award-winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligence

"Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.

About this title

About the Author

Judea Pearl is chancellor’s professor of computer science at UCLA. The author of three foundational books in AI, he has won numerous awards, including the Alan Turing Award. He lives in Los Angeles, California.  

Dana Mackenzie is a PhD mathematician turned science writer. He has written or co-written fourteen books, mostly on mathematical topics. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 046509760X
• ISBN 13: 9780465097609
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432