Question

Give an example of variables that have correlation but no causation exists? [1 sentence or a graph] You may NOT use the ice cream/crime example AND you may not copy information verbatim from websites. You may look at https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/36/examples-for-teaching-correlation-does-not-mean-causation for examples but you need to (at a minimum) put what you find in your own words and explain what the true cause of the relationship is. In the ice cream/crime example it was found that in a particular city that when ice cream consumption went up so did petty crime (stealing/larceny). The true cause was that it was summer and it was hot (and kids didn't have school to keep them busy). How do we decide if the correlation coefficient is close enough to ± 1 to declare that there is correlation? [1 sentence] What is the problem with using a regression equation to predict what will happen in the distant future? [2 sentences]

Answer 1

Consider the example of the consumption of the food items and the number of temples of the cities. In this case the correlation between them is high and positive. This is the example of causual correlation. The real cause is that the number of the temple's are large of large cities and hence the population of the city also large. So the consumption of the food items also large.