Question

Correlation should not be equated with causation. The textbook presented the example of height and weight to illustrate that point. Based on your life and work experiences and observations, give three additional examples of ­correlations that would be misleading if they were explained using a cause-effect logic, in other words, examples of two variables that may be correlated but do not cause each other. Please use correlation language to describe your examples (see textbook).

Answer 1

It is true that whenever we are dealing with correlation and causation then we should be careful in drawing a conclusion. We should not adopt a jumping attitude. We should apply our brain. Lets take an example.

In summers generally people feel irritated and incidents of road rages also increases. Many volunteers also suggest people to remain calm and cool in peak traffic hours. It is also a fact that sale of ice creams also gets increased in summer.

Now two entirely different aspects are showing same trend at the same time. If we start concluding that ice-creams are the reasons behind road rages then it will be considered as the meaningless conclusion. It will be misleading too.

We should understand the mechanism before reaching to a conclusion. If a person is doing exercise then amount of calorie burn will also increase. Here the calorie burn is being caused due to exercise. If someone says that sunny days may cause more cases of drowning then it may also be partially true.

Generally more people go for swimming on sunny days. If more people are going for swimming then more people will drown is not always true. Hence various other hidden factors also remain in force. These factors need to be understood in a detailed manner, then only we can establish a relation between causation and correlation.