Mark Gerstein

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We will now see that this collider pattern works in exactly the opposite way from chains or forks when we condition on the variable in the middle. If A and C are independent to begin with, conditioning on B will make them dependent. For example, if we look only at famous actors (in other words, we observe the variable Celebrity = 1), we will see a negative correlation between talent and beauty: finding out that a celebrity is unattractive increases our belief that he or she is talented. This negative correlation is sometimes called collider bias or the “explain-away” effect. For simplicity, ...more
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect
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