In: Statistics and Probability
It would be dangerous to come to hasty conclusions looking at two things moving in the same direction (or even in opposite direction.) It is a very common error in application of statistical tools - what is known in the statistical parlance as 'spurous correlation'. Two variables may keep rising over a period, possibly due to an influencing factor which has a positive impact on both variables, but the two impacted variables have no technical relation. In such a scenario, the two impacted variables would exhbit a positive ternd,
Thus, a relation found to be empirically true, should be first established to be technically related or a possible meaningful justification must be evolved before coming to the conclusion that one variable influences the other. DONE