Dear all:
I am being told by very knowledgeable members of the UAI
community that causality theories X,Y,Z can handle the "raincoats"
example in my message(l0/3/03;l0/4/03.) But what I have not seen so far,
is a description of how it can be done. For convenience, let me
restate the example. Note that the "raincoats" example is typical of
causality-related problems which arise in real-world settings.
I am a manufacturer of raincoats. To increase sales, I
increased spending on advertising by 20%. Sales increased by l0%. As a
manufacturer, I would like to know if the increase in sales was caused
by the increase in spending on advertising?
My contention is that no existing theory of causality can
answer this question. The problem is that the increase in spending on
advertising was just one of many factors which resulted in the increase
in sales. Some of these factors are visible to me and some are not.
Since the increase in spending on advertising is just one of possibly
many factors, it would be unreasonable to assert that it and only it
caused the increase in sales. Thus, it is necessary to define a degree
to which the increase in spending on advertising caused the increase in
sales. Clearly, the degree cannot be defined precisely. Furthermore,
statistical techniques cannot be used since we are not dealing with an
experiment which can be repeated.
I would be perfectly willing to retract my contention if
someone could show how the "raincoats" example can be handled by an
existing theory.
Warm regards.
Lotfi
--
Lotfi A. Zadeh
Professor in the Graduate School, Computer Science Division
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 -1776
Director, Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC)
Address:
Computer Science Division
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776
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