Info Science

Cost, Cause & Effect

milhayser | May 22, 2012

Cause and effect weave a tangled web, but a new data analysis tool called MIC can help make sense of it all. The Weizmann Institute writes that "Large data sets with thousands of variables are increasingly common in fields as diverse as genomics, physics, political science, economics and more." Evaluating pairs of variables from among the thousands, MIC assigns each a score based on the strength of the relation between its variables. For example, while combing through an incredibly complex dataset from the World Health Organization, MIC observed that "obesity increases monotonically with…

Advertisment

Donate

ScienceBlogs is where scientists communicate directly with the public. We are part of Science 2.0, a science education nonprofit operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Please make a tax-deductible donation if you value independent science communication, collaboration, participation, and open access.

You can also shop using Amazon Smile and though you pay nothing more we get a tiny something.

Science 2.0

Science Codex

Glyphosate reduces soil biodiversity and decreases the proportion of native species (French)

Cost, Cause & Effect

What's behind these secret marks on postage stamps?

How do we use the CMB to learn about the Universe?

Comments of the Week #105: from the movie 'Gravity' to the most astounding fact