Talk:Causal inference

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2019 and 24 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MilquetoastTimes. Peer reviewers: Jjbaggins.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:44, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

removing flag for insufficient inline citations

I removed {more footnotes|date=September 2012} since I dont see a list of references, with unclear sources as of 8/2014. I see ample inline citations present.

relation to causal reasoning

There is a separate article on Causal reasoning, which discusses discusses logical approaches to the same problem that this addresses (though, in little detail in places). I'm not sure if/how these should be merged or connected somehow. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:CC:8000:213:8035:8C53:F23E:B604 (talk) 14:29, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Incomplete article -tag

The real problem of the article is, it is a skeleton, it isnt fleshed out enough, it is incomplete.

A few editors have "dumped" sentences of their particular expertise (biology-molecular epidemiology and computer science for example) in this so far amorphous looking page instead of starting subdivisions, or looking at the whole field, which permeates all of science, from geology to astrophysics.--Wuerzele (talk) 15:24, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

The article is and remains incomplete, as mentioned above and the flag is justified- I am reverting removal of flag by Omnipaedista, who did a drive-by edit, and made no productive contribution on this page, so far, as I can see.--Wuerzele (talk) 05:22, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that. When adding a tag-template, please create a separate section on the talk-page (instead of commenting on older comments) so that the cause for tagging is crystal clear to other editors. --Omnipaedista (talk) 05:33, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Omnipaedista, people have different work habits. what you suggest is by no means a common practice on WP. And to be crystal clear: I didnt just comment on older comments, I actually did something (I removed an inappropriate flag about which the poster didnt start a section you see) and then I did some more (like real editing and adding) and then I put the 2 thoughts in 1 section, but this seems too much for you , you need to not only revert but criticize the productive editor, even though you in the meanwhile still havent contributed to the article. Hey, a little humility and then tolerance for different work habits goes a long way. have a good one.--Wuerzele (talk) 05:58, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I did not criticize anyone's work habits. Let me quote WP:DRIVEBYTAGGING: "It can help to refer to applicable content policies". --Omnipaedista (talk) 06:16, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I just realized that you may have taken the "instead of commenting on older comments" part in my comment above as a criticism. It was not. I merely pointed out that a more helpful talk-page layout is desirable when a new discussion begins. --Omnipaedista (talk) 06:38, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

A few suggestions

Great article. Important topic. A few suggestions that might help readers.

Can you provide a bit more information to describe the relationship between statistical inference and causal inference? It is not clear to me if you mean them to be the same thing or if you mean causal to be a subcategory of statistical inference.

I would suggest making "process tracing" and "fuzzy set theory" into links either to external articles/books that explain the method or to other wikipedia articles on those topics.

What do you mean by "widely-practiced methodologies" in the second paragraph? Which methodologies?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjbaggins (talk • contribs) 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Regarding my massive edits

I have introduced to this page a number of edits that are significant. I have almost doubled the length of the article and I believe I rewrote most of what was already here. I have a background in political science and my sources (I hope) come highly reputable. I encourage debate on my edits, I highly recommend some of my sources for reading, ESPECIALLY Angrist and Pischke, Schrodt, and Achen. Overall I didn't introduce too many new topics as much as I did make current topics more easily accessible by building out topic sentences, analysis, separating paragraphs into (a couple times) multiple sections (etc.). I originally did not intend to spend so much time editing this page, but once I started I did not find a suitable stopping point until I had made substantial edits to the page. This is not normally something I normally do or advocate anyone doing spontaneously, but since I did not change the content of the article as much as provided sources and elaborated on them I thought it was ok. I only ask that my edits be carefully reviewed before substantially changing them--14,000 new bytes is not a lot of text as far as I'm concerned (in the grand scheme of things) and this is, I believe, an article that (even if you don't like my work) is of such importance as to deserve to be broad and ambitious. I am especially hopeful that someone with a background in medicine will grace this article. Adamopoulos (talk) 17:00, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I am also concerned that the very structure of this article is inappropriate. It might be less necessary to group subjects by discipline than by methodology, as this is an article about methodology. I refrain from making these edits in the meantime but may do this in the future if I receive no strong objections in the near future. Adamopoulos (talk) 17:06, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Now that I think about it this page would benefit significantly from breaking down causal inference approaches across methodology rather than by discipline. This will require some advanced literature so I'll probably begin a lit review for that. I think having sections that list major methods of determining causality such as (1) experimental (2) quasi-experimental and (3, 4, 5,...) other and then including different sections such as 'approaches in medicine' or 'approaches in the social science' would be good. I think it would be important to list qualifiers within those sections such as 'Despite most or all methods of causal inference being applicable to all kinds of situations, each scientific field has seen certain methods adopted more frequently than others.' Adamopoulos (talk) 17:19, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Now that I have sat with it a little bit longer I am hopelessly confused. In the context of the page on causality, causal inference, causal analysis, and causal reasoning I'm not sure what the point of these articles remaining disparate is. Should causal analysis be merged with this article? I'm looking for outside advice. Adamopoulos (talk) 21:24, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Adamopoulos, thanks for improving the article! Causal analysis seems out of place, it would probably best to merge its salvageable parts into this article and have Causal analysis redirect to this one. Causality is mainly about the philosophical issue rather than empirical strategies as presented in this article. The first part of Causal reasoning should probably be deleted, the second part can be renamed to something like "Psychological causality". Perhaps there is some WikiProject you can ask for further input? Caius G. (talk) 15:52, 14 April 2021 (UTC)