The Book of Why

The New Science of Cause and Effect

By: Judea Pearl, Dana Mackenzie

Narrated by: Mel Foster

Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

How the study of causality revolutionized science and the world

"Correlation does not imply causation". This mantra has been invoked by scientists for decades and has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, sparked by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and placed 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2018 Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

Excellent book but hard to listen to as an audiobook

This book is absolutely worth a read for anyone doing data science. But, since it makes a lot of references to figures in the supplementary PDF and reads out complicated equations, it’s difficult to listen to as an audiobook.

A True Miracle

This work represents a foundational knowledge obtained by a few, desperately needed by all. Key truths to morality and agency can be gleaned by a reader interacting with the text.

I, for one, am a better person.

Great book. Worth a listen and a challenge.

Great book. Had to put my statistics thinking cap on but super interesting. Definitely worth a listen if you want to challenge yourself. And it will challenge and download the pdf to follow along with the diagrams. It is needed.

Shouldn’t be an audiobook

I found it tough to grasp the concepts without seeing the stats, graphs and examples

On every scientist's required reading list

An excellent book on many different levels in many different fields including philosophy, science, history, mathematics, and innovation. Every aspiring scientist should read this book. The statistical formulas and language add to the text, but may be ignored by readers won simply want an understanding of the ideas that underlie causal analysis.

great book!

This is a very good book content wise, but it my not be the most friendly to listen to. There are many passages with formulas and equations, which will make casual listening harder than usual.

Good to read not to hear

Given the presence of several diagrams, the images are difficult to be expressed in words.

Interesting developments

I have some background in statistics and AI so I could follow along with much of what the book covered. I wasn't able to completely follow along with the math though solely through listening. If you don't mind not completely understanding the math it might be a good listen. If you want
to understand the math look for the author's textbook on Causality instead.

The author drew rich comparisons at many times through his cultural and religious experience. It was useful in helping to explain his thoughts on the material and interesting to see how humanity historically has wrestled with some of these topics. If you are needlessly offended by references to material that has religious origin you have been forewarned.

I am not sure I completely agree with all of the assertions the author makes about the impacts of causality and artificial intelligence but I do think the development of this branch of mathmatics sounds significant and worthy of some attention.

I'm still processing..

This was my first exposure ever to causal inference. I will definitely need to read the print to get a better understanding of all the points covered but the audiobook made it possible for me to just temporarily skip over the mathematical formalities and get a very good sense for what this topic is about and why it is so profoundly important.

Difficult listen

This is a good book, however, the content is practically impossible to follow in the audiobook version because of the complexity. I had to buy a written copy to be able to appreciate the book.