Cause and Correlation in Biology - A User's Guide to Path Analysis, Structural Equations and Causal Inference

Bill Shipley

Cambridge University Press

2000

329 páginas

10h 58m

ISBN-10: 0521791537

Bill Shipley explores the logical and methodological relationships between correlation and causation. He presents a series of statistical methods that can test, and potentially discover, cause-effect relationships between variables in situations where it is not possible to conduct randomized, or experimentally controlled, studies. Many of these methods are quite new and most are generally unknown to biologists. Besides describing how to conduct these statistical tests, he also puts the methods into historical context and explains when they can and cannot justifiably be used to test causal claims.

Resenhas (1)

4 (Muito bom)

An excellent introduction to structural equation models and path analysis, giving a different approach to statistical analysis released by Fisher and Pearson (not only correlations but causal relations).
The book is not complete at all for SEM and path analysis, what is necessary to use other books to address some questions, such as dynamic models and group comparison.
The Shipley's writing is delicious and easy to accomplish, and have important phylosophical approaches to cause and correlation in Biology.