Causation vs correlation

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Can someone Eli5 please.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Things which tend to happen together are correlated. They may or may not cause one another, but when one thing happens, the other thing does too. Causation is when one thing is the cause of another thing.

If Bob punches you in the face, your face will hurt. This is both correlation and causation. The punching and the hurting happen at around the same time, so they are correlated. Bob punched you in the face, and it *caused* your face to hurt, so it’s causation as well.

If Bob punches us both in the face, both my face and your face will hurt at the same time. My face hurting and your face hurting are correlated. However, my face hurting didn’t cause your face to hurt, and neither did your face hurting cause my face to hurt, so there is no causation there. When two things are correlated but there’s no causation between them, there’s generally – but not always! – a shared underlying cause. In this case it’s Bob, who really needs to learn to control his anger.

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