Causal Analytics for Applied Risk Analysis

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxii

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2. Concepts and Methods of Causal Analytics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Causal Analytics and Risk Analytics

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 3-95

   3. Causal Concepts, Principles, and Algorithms

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 97-247

3. Descriptive Analytics in Public and Occupational Health

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 249-249

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   2. Descriptive Analytics for Public Health: Socioeconomic and Air Pollution Correlates of Adult Asthma, Heart Attack, and Stroke Risks

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 251-283

   3. Descriptive Analytics for Occupational Health: Is Benzene Metabolism in Exposed Workers More Efficient at Very Low Concentrations?

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 285-311

   4. How Large Are Human Health Risks Caused by Antibiotics Used in Food Animals?

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 313-332

   5. Quantitative Risk Assessment of Human Risks of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from Swine Operations

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 333-352

4. Predictive and Causal Analytics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 353-353

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   2. Attributive Causal Modeling: Quantifying Human Health Risks Caused by Toxoplasmosis from Open System Production of Swine

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 355-374

   3. How Well Can High-Throughput Screening Tests Results Predict Whether Chemicals Cause Cancer in Mice and Rats?

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 375-395

   4. Mechanistic Causality: Biological Mechanisms of Dose-Response Thresholds for Inflammation-Mediated Diseases Caused by Asbestos Fibers and Mineral Particles

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 397-414

5. Evaluation Analytics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 415-415

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   2. Evaluation Analytics for Public Health: Has Reducing Air Pollution Reduced Death Rates in the United States?

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 417-442

   3. Evaluation Analytics for Occupational Health: How Well Do Laboratories Assess Workplace Concentrations of Respirable Crystalline Silica?

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 443-454

6. Risk Management: Insights from Prescriptive, Learning, and Collaborative Analytics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 455-455

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   2. Improving Individual, Group, and Organizational Decisions: Overcoming Learning Aversion in Evaluating and Managing Uncertain Risks

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 457-492

   3. Improving Risk Management: From Lame Excuses to Principled Practice

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 493-511

   4. Improving Institutions of Risk Management: Uncertain Causality and Judicial Review of Regulations

      • Louis Anthony Cox Jr., Douglas A. Popken, Richard X. Sun

      Pages 513-556

Causal analytics methods can revolutionize the use of data to make effective decisions by revealing how different choices affect probabilities of various outcomes. This book presents and illustrates models, algorithms, principles, and software for deriving causal models from data and for using them to optimize decisions with uncertain outcomes. It discusses how to describe and summarize situations; detect changes; evaluate effects of policies or interventions; learn what works best under different conditions; predict values of as-yet unobserved quantities from available data; and identify the most likely explanations for observed outcomes, including surprises and anomalies. The book resents practical techniques for causal modeling and analytics that practitioners can apply to improve understanding of how choices affect probabilities of consequences and, based on this understanding, to recommend choices that are more likely to accomplish their intended objectives.The book begins with a survey of modern analytics methods, focusing mainly on techniques useful for decision, risk, and policy analysis. Chapter 2 introduces free in-browser software, including the Causal Analytics Toolkit (CAT) software, to enable readers to perform the analyses described and to apply modern analytics methods easily to their own data sets. Chapters 3 through 11 show how to apply causal analytics and risk analytics to practical risk analysis challenges, mainly related to public and occupational health risks from pathogens in food or from pollutants in air. Chapters 12 through 15 turn to broader questions of how to improve risk management decision-making by individuals, groups, organizations, institutions, and multi-generation societies with different cultures and norms for cooperation. These chapters examine organizational learning, community resilience, societal risk management, and intergenerational collaboration and justice in managing risks.

• Decision Making
• Risk Analysis
• Risk Management
• Risk Models
• Causal Analytics
• Risk Analytics
• Descriptive Analytics
• Evaluation Analytics
• Causal Models

• Cox Associates, Denver, USA

  Louis Anthony Cox Jr.

• Cox Associates, Littleton, USA

  Douglas A. Popken

• Cox Associates, East Brunswick, USA

  Richard X. Sun

Drs. Tony Cox, Douglas Popken, and Richard Sun are experts in risk analysis, operations research, and computer science who have collaborated over the past three decades on diverse analytics applications and software products, including telecommunications network and operations optimization, health risk analysis, and machine learning innovations for making optimal use of costly information. Dr. Cox is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and Editor-in-Chief of Risk Analysis: An International Journal.

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