Causal inference

Causal inference is the process of identifying and understanding cause-effect relationships between variables. It's an intellectual discipline that considers the assumptions, study designs, and estimation strategies that allow researchers to draw causal conclusions based on data. For example, a person who has a headache, then takes an aspirin, and the headache goes away. The aspirin may have caused the headache to go away, or it was already subsiding and would have disappeared over time, regardless.