Causal notation

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Causal notation is notation used to express cause and effect.

In nature and human societies, many phenomena have causal relationships where one phenomenon A (a cause) impacts another phenomenon B (an effect). Establishing causal relationships is the aim of many scientific studies across fields ranging from biology[1] and physics[2] to social sciences and economics.[3] It is also a subject of accident analysis,[4] and can be considered a prerequisite for effective policy making.

To describe causal relationships between phenomena, non-quantitative visual notations are common, such as arrows, e.g. in the nitrogen cycle or many chemistry[5][6] and mathematics[7] textbooks. Mathematical conventions are also used, such as plotting an independent variable on a horizontal axis and a dependent variable on a vertical axis,[8] or the notation to denote that a quantity "" is a dependent variable which is a function of an independent variable "".[9] Causal relationships are also described using quantitative mathematical expressions.[10] (See Notations section.)

The following examples illustrate various types of causal relationships. These are followed by different notations used to represent causal relationships.

  1. ^ Marshall, BarryJ; Warren, J.Robin (June 1984). "Unidentified curved bacilli in the stomach of patients with gastritis and peptic ulceration". The Lancet. 323 (8390): 1311–1315. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(84)91816-6. PMID 6145023. S2CID 10066001.
  2. ^ Aspect, Alain; Grangier, Philippe; Roger, Gérard (12 July 1982). "Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment : A New Violation of Bell's Inequalities". Physical Review Letters. 49 (2): 91–94. Bibcode:1982PhRvL..49...91A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.49.91.
  3. ^ Fischer, Stanley; Easterly, William (1990). "The economics of the government budget constraint". The World Bank Research Observer. 5 (2): 127–142. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.1009.4220. doi:10.1093/wbro/5.2.127.
  4. ^ Ladkin, Peter; Loer, Karsten (April 1998). Analysing Aviation Accidents Using WB-Analysis - an Application of Multimodal Reasoning (PDF). Spring Symposion. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-12-21.
  5. ^ Bruice, Paula Yurkanis (2007). Organic chemistry (5th ed.). Pearson Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, NJ. p. 44,45. ISBN 978-0-13-196316-0.
  6. ^ Petrucci, Ralph H.; Harwood, William S.; Herring, F. Geoffrey; Madura, Jeffry D. (2007). General Chemistry Principles & Modern Applications (9th ed.). Pearson Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, NJ. pp. 573–650. ISBN 978-0-13-149330-8.
  7. ^ B. George, George (2007). Thomas' calculus (11th ed.). Pearson. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-321-18558-7.
  8. ^ Petrucci, Ralph H.; Harwood, William S.; Herring, F. Geoffrey; Madura, Jeffry D. (2007). General Chemistry Principles & Modern Applications (9th ed.). Pearson Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, NJ. p. 575. ISBN 978-0-13-149330-8.
  9. ^ B. George, George (2007). Thomas' calculus (11th ed.). Pearson. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-321-18558-7.
  10. ^ Pearl, Judea; Mackenzie, Dana (2018-05-15). The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465097616.