[R] Scatterplot and Causality

[Bert Gunter]

Inline.


On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Lorenzo Isella
<lorenzo.isella at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:27:05 +0200, Robert Baer <rbaer at atsu.edu> wrote:
>
>
>> It strikes me that this is not a particularly productive approach to
>> causality, particularly in an observational setting.  You would need to
>> design an experiment where you had a known manipulation of an explanatory
>> variable and studied the change in a response variable, and then, you came
>> back with the roles  reversed.  I don't think R or indeed any statistical
>> package can help you here.
>>
>
> I certainly agree, but here we are not planning an experiment: we have some
> data sets that were collected having something totally different in mind and
> we wonder if we can extract any info about causality from them.

As others have said:

(Short answer) No.

(Long Answer) Don't be ridiculous.


-- Bert


> Cheers
>
> Lorenzo
>
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-- 

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

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