Causal Inference: Theory and Practice

Harvard FAS

Randomized experimentation is the standard for quantifying the causal effect of an intervention in the public health and biomedical sciences, yet randomization may be impossible, impractical, or unethical, leading to real-world scenarios in which causal inferences are based upon observational comparisons. This course reviews the foundations of causal inference in (bio)statistics, outlining causal-analytic methods that help to extract as much evidence as imperfect observational studies carry…