摘要：Causal analysis is a powerful tool to unravel the data complexity and hence provide clues to achieving, say, better platform design, efficient interoperability and service management, etc. Data science will surely benefit from the advancement in this field. Here we introduce into this community a recent finding in physics on causality and the subsequent rigorous and quantitative causality analysis. The resulting formula is concise in form, involving only the common statistics namely sample covariance. A corollary is that causation implies correlation, but not vice versa, resolving the long-standing philosophical debate over correlation versus causation. The applicability to big data analysis is validated with time series purportedly generated with hidden processes. As a demonstration, a preliminary application to the gross domestic product (GDP) data of United States, China, and Japan reveals some subtle USA-China-Japan relations in certain periods.
