Microsoft DoWhy is an Open Source Framework for Causal Reasoning

The framework explores causal relationships between different variables.

The human mind has a remarkable ability to associate causes with a specific event. From the outcome of an election to an object dropping on the floor, we are constantly associating chains of events that cause a specific effect. Neuropsychology refers to this cognitive ability as causal reasoning. Computer science and economics study a specific form of causal reasoning known as causal inference which focuses on exploring relationships between two observed variables. Over the years, machine learning has produced many methods for causal inference but they remain mostly difficult to use in mainstream applications. Last year, Microsoft Research open sourced DoWhy, a framework for causal thinking and analysis which since then has seen many interesting contributions.

The challenge with causal inference is not that is a new discipline, quite the opposite, but that the current methods represent a very small and simplistic version of causal reasoning. Most models that try to connect causes such as linear regression rely on empirical analysis that makes some assumption about the data. Pure causal inference relies on counterfactual analysis which is a closer representation to how humans make decisions…