{"id":12609,"date":"2017-08-21T05:00:31","date_gmt":"2017-08-21T10:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=12609"},"modified":"2017-08-15T19:54:59","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T00:54:59","slug":"metrics-monday-regression-and-causality-for-dummies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/12609","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Metrics Monday: Regression and Causality for Dummies*"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I do all of my teaching in the fall, which means that I have spent the last week and am spending this week preparing my teaching for the fall semester.<\/p>\n<p>One of the classes that I teach is the Department&#8217;s undergraduate development class, formally titled Microeconomics of International Development.<\/p>\n<p>Because the students in my class have heterogeneous levels of preparation when it comes to econometrics, I have them read two handouts aiming to give them a good intuitive understanding. One is <a href=\"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Regression.pdf\">a primer on linear regression<\/a>, which teaches them how to read a table of regression results. The other is <a href=\"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Causality.pdf\">a primer on causality<\/a>, which teaches them how to question the causal statements they are presented with and discusses a few of the ways causality can be disentangled from correlation. I make both handouts available here given that other instructors of classes relying on quantitative findings might find them useful.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>* It should go without saying that I do not think of my students as dummies. But because there&#8217;s always someone whose sarcasm detector is broken, I should note that I am merely capitalizing here on the famous &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/ref=sr_nr_p_lbr_books_series_b_0?fst=as%3Aoff&amp;rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Afor+dummies%2Cp_lbr_books_series_browse-bin%3AFor+Dummies&amp;keywords=for+dummies&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1502814405&amp;rnid=3275128011\"><em>for Dummies<\/em><\/a>&#8221; book series&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I do all of my teaching in the fall, which means that I have spent the last week and am spending this week preparing my&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/12609\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8216;Metrics Monday: Regression and Causality for Dummies*<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-3hn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12609"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12618,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12609\/revisions\/12618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}