Northcott, Robert (2004) Pearson's wrong turning: against statistical measures of causal efficacy. In: UNSPECIFIED. (In Press)

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Abstract

Standard statistical measures of strength of association, although pioneered by Pearson deliberately to be acausal, nowadays are routinely used to measure causal efficacy. But their acausal origins have left them ill suited to this latter purpose. I distinguish between two different conceptions of causal efficacy, and argue that: 1) Both conceptions can be useful 2) The statistical measures only attempt to capture the first of them 3) They are not fully successful even at this 4) An alternative definition more squarely based on causal thinking not only captures the second conception, it can also capture the first one better too.

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Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Northcott, Robert
Keywords:	causation, causal efficacy, statistics, Pearson, correlation coefficient, analysis of variance
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Causation
Depositing User:	Robert Northcott
Date Deposited:	18 Aug 2004
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2010 17:18
Item ID:	1894
Public Domain:	No
Conference Date:	November 2004
Conference Location:	Austin, Texas
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Causation
Date:	2004
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/1894

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• Pearson's wrong turning: against statistical measures of causal efficacy. (deposited 18 Aug 2004) [Currently Displayed]
  • Pearson's wrong turning: against statistical measures of causal efficacy. (deposited 16 Nov 2004)

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