Statisticians say “correlation does not equal causation,” but what if we can prove cause and effect using new tools? The Book of Why, by Judea Pearl explains how this new science of cause and effect has shifted statistics over the last 30 years.
As John Johnson and Mike Gluck point out in their book, EVERYDATA, ice cream consumption and murder rates both go up in the summer, but that does not mean that eating ice cream causes murder. Rising summer temperatures seem to be involved.
They also provide a link to Tyler Vigen’s website, Spurious Correlations.
Does U.S. spending on space, science and technology cause suicides? No, but they are correlated at a 99.79%. These and other crazy correlations are available.
So don’t confuse correlation with causation.
Have you noticed that in most cities, every time there are lots of umbrellas, it’s raining?
From this analysis, the obvious way to make it rain is to be sure that everyone has an umbrella, preferably a black one, since that seems to be the kind that’s most visible during big storms.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
Continue Reading "Confused about causation and correlation (from Seth Godin’s blog)"
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