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

by Judea Pearl

The new science has spawned a simple mathematical language to articulate causal relationships that we know as well as those we wish to find out about.

The rules of algebra now permit us to rewrite this same equation in a wild variety of forms, for example, P = B/k, k = B/P, or B–kP = 0. They all mean the same thing—that if we know any two of the three quantities, the third is determined. None of the letters k, B, or P is in any mathematical way privileged over any of the others. How then can we express our strong conviction that it is the pressure that causes the barometer to change and not the other way around? And if we cannot express even this, how can we hope to express the many other causal convictions that do not have mathematical formulas, such as that the rooster’s crow does not cause the sun to rise?