Separate Correlation From Causation: How to understand what truly needs to be addressed to solve a problem
In efforts to understand why certain events happen, we must go looking for instigating factors. It’s only logical that we try to find a previous event directly responsible for causing the event we’re looking at. This is what we should spend our time trying to fix, but it turns out that we might be spending all of our time on the wrong issue. We’re fooled into confusing correlation for causation. Therefore, separating correlation from causation is essential to avoid making incorrect assumptions.
Correlation is a statistical term. It shows that two individual elements or variables share similar traits or trends—“ice cream and homicides both increased.” That’s all there is to correlation: two things behave similarly in this way or that way. Correlation does not describe why or how the relationship between two items is the way it is; it doesn’t give a reason. It just says, “These two things are generally doing the same thing at the same time.”
Causation, on the other hand, is an effort to establish the reason things happen—also referred to as “cause and effect.” The message of causation is: “This thing changed, which in turn caused this other thing to change.” To believe that the increase in ice cream sales caused the increase in homicides is a logical mistake. This is countered by the phrase correlation doesn’t imply causation—just because two events are similar doesn’t mean one is causing the other one to happen.
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In efforts to understand why certain events happen, we must go looking for instigating factors. It’s only logical that we try to find a previous event directly responsible for causing the event we’re looking at. This is what we should spend our time trying to fix, but it turns out that we might be spending all of our time on the wrong issue. We’re fooled into confusing correlation for causation. Therefore, separating correlation from causation is essential to avoid making incorrect assumptions.
Correlation is a statistical term. It shows that two individual elements or variables share similar traits or trends—“ice cream and homicides both increased.” That’s all there is to correlation: two things behave similarly in this way or that way. Correlation does not describe why or how the relationship between two items is the way it is; it doesn’t give a reason. It just says, “These two things are generally doing the same thing at the same time.”
Causation, on the other hand, is an effort to establish the reason things happen—also referred to as “cause and effect.” The message of causation is: “This thing changed, which in turn caused this other thing to change.” To believe that the increase in ice cream sales caused the increase in homicides is a logical mistake. This is countered by the phrase correlation doesn’t imply causation—just because two events are similar doesn’t mean one is causing the other one to happen.
#HumanNature
♡ ㅤ ⎙ㅤ ⌲ 🔕💪
ˡᶦᵏᵉ ˢᵃᵛᵉ ˢʰᵃʳᵉ ᵏⁱⁿᵈˡʸ ᵘⁿᵐᵘᵗᵉ
ᶜʰᵃⁿⁿᵉˡ
Join now👇👇👇
@Laws_of_Human_Nature