Comment: Understanding Simpson's Paradox.

Pearl, J. (2014). Comment: Understanding Simpson's Paradox. The American Statistician, 68(1), 8-13.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

2014

Volume

68

Issue

1

Pages

8-13

DOI

10.1080/00031305.2014.876829

DOI registrant

Taylor & Francis

Link

https://doi.org/10.1080/00031305.2014.876829

Cited from

mathematics

Cited by

3 citations across 3 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Partition Dependence of Aggregates
  • The pattern recurs in network science (modular structure is partition-dependent: modularity optimisation can fail to identify modules below a certain scale), in causal inference (Simpson's paradox as the sign-reversal symptom of collapsing or un-collapsing a covariate),

Mechanisms

• Cohort Transition Table
  • It is also vulnerable to Simpson's paradox

    This sourceDefines Simpson's paradox as a reversal between disaggregated group trends and the combined aggregate trend.

• Coverage Heatmap
  • A heatmap can only show gaps on the dimensions it plots, so a fatal void hiding on a collapsed axis reads as fully covered — an instance of Simpson's paradox

    This sourceSimpson's paradox shows that aggregating across a third variable can obscure or reverse associations visible within subgroups.

Verification

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Registry ID ref:ac04760040e8 · see in the full table