I often teach in my statistics class that correlation should not be confused with causation. That is, observing that two variables move together does not necessarily mean that one variable caused the ...

You often hear the admonition “correlation does not imply causation.” But what exactly is causation? Unlike correlation, which has a specific mathematical meaning, causation is a slippery concept that ...

Correlation doesn't imply causation. You've probably heard that before. It's a true statement that's important in statistical analysis—if more tall people own cats, that doesn't mean that cats cause ...

The rooster thinks he summons the sun because the sunrise always follows his crow. Correlation, at its worst, is a very confident rooster. For decades, our data economy has run on the same illusion: ...

UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH: What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? Today we look at the dangers of making a link between unrelated results. Here’s an ...

"I read it as a joke!" one student chortled. "It definitely wasn't completely serious, was it?" another asked as she shook her head in disbelief. The intimate group of nine students—which includes a ...

IN THE mid-1990s, an algorithm trained on hospital admission data made a surprising prediction. It said that people who presented with pneumonia were more likely to survive if they also had asthma.