Stanford Causal Science Conference

Stanford hosted the 2024 Causal Science Conference, and I was there to check it out. I am causal-curious. In my opinion, causal inference is one of the hottest and honestly seems to be one of the least explored topics in statistics these days. Given its importance, I wonder how folks in astronomy and physics have not been paying more attention to the field: I was the only practicing (astro)physicist there!. As a bonus, experts in this field are highly sought-after in the industry.

There were 50-70 people attending the conference. Mostly presentations by graduate students and postdocs with fascinating work. One Nobel Prize winner in economics (which was casually pointed out to me by Juraj Bodik).

My take as an outsider: the subject is actually interesting, with a solid theoretical foundation. There were 16 solid technical talks with none of the hype typical of ML events. I got so interested that I used the opportunity to ask folks there for a bibliography to get started in the field. I also started a Coursera on causal inference. Excited to learn more!

Orrie Page talking about price experimentation and interference.