The fundamental problem of causal inference

Holland JASA 1986. Planet Money: What Causes What?   On Monday in class I reviewed most of the material in the nice (and famous) 1986 JASA article by Paul Holland with the crazy-general title "Statistics and Causal Inference". Additionally, I described in very informal terms some of the common methods of inferring causal effects from…

Bayesian preliminaries

David Blackwell interview. Demo script. Aside from some logistics and introductions, I had hoped to accomplish three things in the first class. Motivate the use of probability models for producing direct inferential statements. Point out points of departure from alternative approaches to statistics. Demonstrate the practical "work flow" of a simple Bayesian analysis. For the first objective,…

Spring 2018

This blog will serve as a platform for class notes from my two Spring 2018 graduate courses in Bayesian Statistics and Causal Inference at Arizona State University. I'm running the notes from WordPress because it has decent LaTeX support and it is easier than Blackboard. The first order of business is to test out the…