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 are shopping in a busy supermarket and you're ready to pay up and go home. You perform a quick visual sweep of the checkout options and immediately start ramming your cart through traffic toward ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...