Eli5: What is the difference between correlation and causation

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Eli5: What is the difference between correlation and causation

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Correlation mean there is a link between two events. Causation mean that one of the two event is causing the other.

A cool example is in New York city when they found out that when more ice cream were sold, there was more crime. This is correlation, when one event (sell of ice cream) increase, another event (crime) also increase proportionally.

But of course there isn’t any causation between the two. Selling more ice cream don’t cause more crime and making more crime don’t increase the selling of ice cream.

Sometime it’s just random chance that there is correlation between two event. Other time like with ice cream and crime it was a third event that were causing both. In this exemple, Summer was the cause of more crime and more ice cream sold.

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