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Example

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 AA, BB, CC, and DD 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 BB 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 BB (or its descendant CC), which opens the back-door path, deconfounding can still be achieved by additionally controlling for either AA or DD. Traditional statistical approaches that unconditionally control for all observed variables (like BB and CC) are incorrect here because adjusting for the collider BB opens a non-causal path, confounding the relationship between XX and YY.

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Updated 2026-06-18

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Data Science