An Introduction to Directed Acyclical Graphs

Do smaller class sizes improve student learning? Does raising the minimum wage increase unemployment? Does teen motherhood cause poverty? Important policy questions like these are fundamentally about causality, and to answer them we need to move beyond “correlation isn’t causation” and figure out when it is. Professor Scott Cunningham will introduce students and faculty to directed acyclic graphs (DAGS), a powerful graphical tool that helps clarify the relationships between variables and guide theory-based research design decisions. No prior experience with DAGs is assumed.

Register in advance at go/dags.