Question

Explain in your own words the difference between correlation and causation. Find an example of two things that are highly correlated (linearly) but do not have a causal relationship. Explain how this is possible and identify at least one reason that this relationship exists.

Answer 1

Correlation between two variables means if the value of one of the variables increases, the value of the other also increases if there is positive correlation and if the change is in the opposite direction, the correlation is said to be negative.

On the other hand, causation means that the occurrence of one of the events is a result of the occurrence of the other, i.e., there is a cause-effect relationship between the two events.

For example, number of churches in a town and number of deaths must have a positive correlation for larger means more number of people and hence more deaths and also in larger towns there must be more churches. However there is no causal relationship between the two since the number of deaths is not altered by increasing or decreasing the number of churches in the town.