collider.

1. In a causal graph, a variable that is a common effect of two or more other variables.

2. An accelerator that brings beams of particles into collision so researchers can study their interactions.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• condition on a collider
• collider variable
• collider bias
• particle collider

On the page

Hospital admission can act as a collider when both illness severity and access to care affect it.

The collider sends particle beams in opposite directions around a ring.

Usage notes

In a directed acyclic graph, a collider is a shared effect of two or more causes; conditioning on it can create a noncausal association. Sense 2: In physics, this is a machine that collides particle beams; the causal-graph sense is a different technical meaning.