differences - Correlation vs Causation



Elsewhere on Stack Exchange I came across the following comment.



The sorting is based on values, not family. If you value knowledge, you will be set to Ravenclaw, for example. Needless to say, if your parents value the acquisition of knowledge most and foremost, their children are likely to share those values, but it is not a guarantee. Correlation, not causation.



I stated that this was causation rather then correlation because the commenter is arguing for a cause-and-effect relationship. The fact the cause-and-effect isn't guaranteed doesn't change that. Other comments have not agreed with me, and I thought rather than an off-topic discussion there, I'd ask over here to see if my understanding of causation vs correlation was correct.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

single word requests - What do you call hypothetical inhabitants living on the Moon?