minkowski
Joined 8 years ago
Joined 8 years ago
So, while the citizens might not want it, faculty seem perfectly happy to keep developing such technology for other clients.
1. the authors fit a certain model, adjusted for certain covariates, and observe that a certain effect of interest is statistically significant.
2. therefore, if (a) the model is "correct" i.e. sufficiently well approximates the observed data distribution, and (b) the regression coefficient and structural coefficient coincide i.e. the true generative DAG is compatible with the chosen set of covariates, then a causal association from the predictor to the outcome exists with high probability.
3. the authors simply assume (2) and therefore imply that a causal relation likely exists.
A cynical part of me wonders whether this letter being circulated by CTV (as opposed to the motivations of those signing it, about which I have no idea) isn't just to give political cover on talk radio and TV news for the government's current wait-and-see approach, which health workers (and progressives generally) are against.
[Slightly unrelated, but potentially relevant given the "doctors say" headline: the government was recently playing radio advertisements explaining how much it "consulted" with the health sector on safely reopening schools but not mentioning the fact that it ignored the main recommendation of reducing class sizes.]
Category theory is an essential part of the vocabulary of 20th-century mathematics. Large swaths of algebra, topology, geometry, and logic are fairly inextricably formulated in this language. Similarly, it seems irreplaceable for certain parts of programming language theory (arguably due to its connection to mathematical logic).
There's certainly a community trying to bring a category-theoretic approach into other fields such as statistics, economics, or other areas of computer science, but it's too early to say it's been "quite a few years".