Starts out well but format is a challenge.

this is a fascinating book but not ultimately very well suited to the audiobook format, as there is much discussion of diagrams and quite a lot of discussion of algebraic formulation. Judea Pearl is the leading scientists in causal theory field, and while it is a valiant attempt to write a a general interest book for non specialists, ultimately he gets so far into the technical details that is almost impossible to follow, at least on an audiobook. There are only so many times one can listen to sentences like "the P of Ý given du X is estimable subject to a du operator".

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Great intro to causal modelling vs traditional

Thorough and well explained examples, with a good sprinkling of historical context. Impressed with how relatively easy to follow it was even in audiobook form

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Is the narrator a robot?

Such a bad American voice, nice gateway book, although quite convoluted despite the chapter areas supposedly breaking it down. It doesn't transcend the sum of its parts into 'a book' for me but resembles more a collection of essays bound in a book format. it might well have just given the equations and formal diagrams and be done in a chapter rather than go on repeating cliches or the most boring anecdotes.

Moreover, the thesis of a new science where for decades science was in statistical stasis makes so little sense. On the one hand he says that causation is intuitive and precedes all other scientific endeavours but then on the other that people gathered data for association and nothing else for decades! Lacking an AI vocabulary doesn't mean causation didn't exist as a basis for pretty much all natural sciences (precluding pure mathematics).

Read David Deutsch on AI's toddling progress, also, it doesn't deliver what it promises. Made me sleepy not because of content but because it just takes so long to get to the point which is usually merely that drawing causation as a diagram is better than not.

What is most annoying, however, is the narrator. Staid American accents impair my ability to take in the information from so many good books like this, Book of Why, Steven Pinker written titles, The Secret of Our Success and so on. The way these narrators narrate it's as though they *are* a program which just reads out in a level voice without any understanding of the topic. Any other voice would have been better. Why do publishers inflict this in audio? Especially on an audience like the UK, why not Jonathan Kebble, Simon Vance, Stephen Fry, Jeremy Irons, Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, Peter Noble, Ric Jerom or any actor able to emote and speak in a clear variable intonation for a British audience?

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

no pdf means graphs described unseen

liked the book overall.. have recommended it to friends.. but as an audiobook.. no pdf ?

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Should not have been an audiobook

Interesting book, however this should never have been an audiobook, to many formulas and references to figures.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

Get the text book not the audio

struggled to pay attention to narrator. sleepy and dull, slow and unmodulated. felt like listening to a really dull old college professor, even though I know from reading the book that the content is extremely interesting. waste of an audiobook.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful