Counterfactual

A counterfactual is an idea or scenario that considers what could have happened if something different had occurred. It’s like asking, “What if?”—for example, “What would have happened if I had taken a different route?” In statistics and AI, counterfactuals help us understand cause-and-effect relationships by imagining alternative outcomes based on different actions or conditions. They are useful for analyzing decisions, predicting results, and understanding the impact of changes, by comparing reality with hypothetical scenarios to see what might have been different.