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Game 2 of the Book of Why
In Game 2 of The Book of Why, the causal path of interest is X rightarrow E rightarrow Y. The variables , , , and are pretreatment variables.
The only potential back-door path is X leftarrow A rightarrow B leftarrow D rightarrow E rightarrow Y. This path is already blocked because acts as a collider (A rightarrow B leftarrow D). Consequently, no variables need to be controlled to satisfy the back-door criterion.
However, if confounding is accidentally introduced by controlling for the collider (or its descendant ), which opens the back-door path, deconfounding can still be achieved by additionally controlling for either or . Traditional statistical approaches that unconditionally control for all observed variables (like and ) are incorrect here because adjusting for the collider opens a non-causal path, confounding the relationship between and .

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