Leslie Myint on YouTube · Open on YouTube
Experimentation, causal thinking and metric design · Proficient · Lesson 60 of 99 · 6 min video, then about 2 hours of practice
Thinking in causal diagrams (DAGs)
After this you can draw a causal diagram for a business question and use it to decide which variables to control for and which to leave alone.
Why it matters
Causal diagrams make your assumptions explicit and tell you what to adjust for. The key lessons: control for confounders, do not control for mediators if you want the total effect, and never control for a collider, which creates bias where there was none. Drawing the diagram with stakeholders is also a powerful way to surface disagreements about how the business works.
How to use this resource
A six-minute introduction to causal graphs: nodes, arrows and what they assume.