Causal Inference: The Mixtape

Causal Inference: The Mixtape by Scott Cunningham

This is primarily an econometrics textbook. There are dense sets of equations and programs (in Stata and R) for performing Causal inference. I skipped over a lot of that and focussed on the narrative. The book primarily deals with teasing out the cause from complex data. Natural Experiments often play a key role. Two things that are almost the same with a slight difference can often provide insight into a policy based on that difference. However, you must also be careful to control for other factors. A lot of the math in this involves doing that. Often graphic visualizations can help to tease out these bits of interest. Much of the results are "freakonomics" style. These results are often well debated. Often some other factors can be found that swing the results in another direction. (Though sometimes the study is just bad.) Having an openness to accept a different result when the data shows otherwise is important for the process. I would prefer a book that is heavier on the stories and less on the mechanics, but I could not expect more from a textbook. The author also pulls in song titles for the chapter headings (thus a "mixtape").