Overhauled readme

[bloebp]

The current readme is too overloaded for users. Changes here are:

• Reduce it only the essential points, since most of the content is part of the documentation
• Add image as overview of the offered features
• Made connection between GCM and PO framework more consistent
• Revise the GCM example to an executable code snipped
• Extended some references to include GCM related work
• Fix build status icon
• Changed github references to py-why (was still pointing to microsoft)

Here the new readme: https://github.com/py-why/dowhy/blob/c0ac8433625b5693175629076ad32a92b0d1eb71/README.rst

The image in the key features section is not show. It is the following:

[amit-sharma]

Added some comments. Let me also make some edits to the readme text and push changes.

A few comments on the image:

1. For falsify/refute: rather than optional, shall we say "Suggested checks" or "optional but highly recommended". If we say "optional", people might think that it is not required for a good analysis.
2. The Effect estimation actually has sub-tasks within it. How about adding another top-level category (in vertical font) as Effect estimation, then the blocks can be: Average Causal Effect, Conditional Causal Effect (CACE), Direct and Indirect Effects. This will make the figure consistent with the structure in the User Guide.
3. Modeling causal relations: Just like we have the causal mechanisms block, can we add a Identify Effect block just after the "define causal graph". It could be a simple block with "Identify causal effect" as the header and the backdoor equation $P(y|do(x))=...$ as the white inset.
4. The "define causal graph" block has some empty space. How about adding a sentence, 'Based on domain knowledge or using causal discovery algorithms (e.g., py-why/causal-learn)"
5. This is a tentative suggestion: How do you feel about moving out-of-domain prediction to the what-if category? It is the only singleton block in the image, and I feel it does fit in "what-if". OOD prediction can be interpreted as a what-if question after the changing the input features to new values.

[emrekiciman]

Thanks for this, @bloebp ! The new README is much more streamlined and easier to read. A couple comments:

• I'd highlight the "documentation is available" link at the top of the README much more strongly. Maybe put it in a highlighted box or a larger font. Also change to "documentation, user guide, and sample notebooks" to make it clear it is more than API docs.

• Somewhere, we should mention that DoWhy is part of PyWhy and a family of tools, and point to https://pywhy.org/

• I agree with Amit about the 'optional' language for refutations.

• I'd suggest titling the whole "installation" and "example usage" together as a "Quick Start" guide. So the whole README becomes 3 major sections: (1) "Intro & key features"; (2) Quick Start; and (3) More information and resources. Not necessarily in this order.

[bloebp]

Thanks a lot @amit-sharma @emrekiciman!

Somehow, the options in displaying stuff in the README.rst is quite limited (and different from the usual rst files). I hope the new version now this is good compromise to make the documentation link more prominent.

The .rst file can be accessed here:
https://github.com/py-why/dowhy/blob/c0ac8433625b5693175629076ad32a92b0d1eb71/README.rst

and the new image is:

PS: The reason why I didn't use the backdoor formula for identification is to avoid the impression that the other features are not relying on that.

Let me know what you think

[amit-sharma]

thanks for the changes @bloebp . Approving.