POL 51 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Abortion-Rights Movements, Causal Inference, Confounding
Document Summary
Difference between a theory/hypothesis and empirical evidence. Theory/hyp: theoretical, abstract, stated without actual data, ideas about how the real world might be operating. What the variable is thought to be. Causality, counterfactual conditions, and the fundamental problem on causal inference. Idea for what causality is: if we were to change x and keep everything else the same, it would produce a change in y even if nothing else about the system were to change. The notion of changing the value of x is the counterfactual. It is a reality we have not observed -- approximation. Two variables are correlated if they are related in some way. Values of one are associated with values of the other. If x doesn"t cause y, why might x and y still be correlated. Identify and test all alternatives -- your claims will be more convincing if you have tested hella times that you"re wrong. Difference between confounding variable and counterfactual condition.
