Eli5: What is the difference between correlation and causation
In: Other
Correlation means two events are connected, but don’t have a direct connection. Maybe you find that there’s a chart showing that the stock market goes up in years that a particular football team has a winning record and stock market goes down in years that team has losing record. But there is nothing in the way that the stock market operates that would be affected by how a football team performs.
Causation is when there is a direct tie. If you look at sports bar revenue in the football team’s city and see that bars sell more beer when the team plays well and sell less beer when the team plays poorly, that would be causation because the team’s performance impacts whether people go out to watch the games and drink or not.
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