Correlation & Cause

A summary.
Observation:
Sunflowers wilt when the soil is dry.
Experiment:
How could we test this?
?? Does watering prevent wilting ??
The experiment leads to supported
evidence of observation; provides a test to
show cause.
If we observe without experiment we can
only show correlation.

just because X is regularly followed by
Y, X does not necessarily CAUSE Y.
Cause or Correlation:
Smoking causes lung cancer
Vitamin C cures the common cold
Running out of gas causes a car to stop
running.
Tanning beds cause skin cancer
Poverty promotes pregnancy

If you were to measure everyones height
and weight, you could then compare
heights and weights and see if they have
any relationship to each other -- any "co-
relation," if you will. Of course, the taller
you are, generally speaking, the more you
weigh. But it is obviously not a perfect
correlation, because some people are thin
and some are not so thin.
Prior to Louis Pasteur, cause and
correlation were viewed different.
L. Pasteur introduced the concept that
germs cause disease
Correlation is what you are doing when
you compare two sets of measurements
(each set is called a variable).
A perfect correlation is +1.
Very close to perfect would be a
comparison of men's shoe size and their
foot length. For example, here is some
data:

Shoe Size Foot Length (in)
John 4 1/2

9 1/4
Dave 5 9 3/8
Sam 5 9 1/4
Jim 6 9.5
Ed 6 1/2 9
Bob 7 9
Ted 8 10 1/8
Matt 11 11
Damian 12 11
Horton 14 11 1/8
This is called a scatter plot. The line is
the line that describes the "best fit" -- in
other words, it accounts for the data most
nicely.




This one is not perfect -- apparently, some
guys buy shoes that are too tight, and
some buy shoes that are too loose! But
you can see by comparing the dots to the
line, it's pretty close to a +1 correlation.


Perfect correlation can also be -1. An
example would be your car's fuel
efficiency and how much money you need
to spend for gas per so many miles. It
should look like this:
Most things have a correlation of 0 (or
close to it). An example would be your
shoe size vs your...
SAT score.


Can you correlate Math scores with
English scores?
If I consistently score > 90% in English,
what would I score in math?
Country Homicide Rate
(per 100,000 per year)
Hand Gun Ownership
(% of population)
USA 8.8 29
Northern Ireland 5.2 1.5
Finland 2.9 7
Canada 2.1 4
Australia 2 2
Scotland 1.8 .5
Belgium 1.8 6
Switzerland 1.2 14
Norway 1.2 3.5
France 1.2 5.5
West Germany 1.2 6.5
Spain 1 2
The Netherlands .9 1
England & Wales .7 .5
And the correlation: +.70. That is quite impressive, and
maybe it says something about the various societies. If
you are wondering about Switzerland's figures, it should be
noted that every adult male is trained in the army and is
required to maintain weapons in his home -- just in case
they get invaded by, say, Italy. On the other hand, you can
see that Northern Ireland has a high homicide rate even
though few people own guns. I think you can guess why!

If you would like a more meaningful number than
correlation itself, you can square it. This will give you a
number that tells you how much of the variance
(variation) in one or the other of the variables is
"explained" by the other. So, for example, the .70
correlation above tells us that 49% of the variation in
homicide rates is related to the ownership of hand
guns. That leaves us with 51% of the variation we still
need to account for.


In psychology, we are generally impressed by
correlations of .3 and higher. .8 or .9 blows
us away. But one thing correlation cannot tell
you is causality. Your grades and your SATs
correlate pretty well -- but which causes
which? Even the homicide-hand gun
example doesn't give you causation. Odds
are always that there is something else that
causes (or partially causes) two things to
correlate. Perhaps coming from richer
parents leads to both good grades and high
SATs. Maybe a violent culture leads to both
more guns and more violence. It takes other
kinds of research -- most especially
experiments -- to pin down cause and
effect!

MAKE SURE YOU KNOW
POSITIVE CORRELATION: the dots go diagonally
upwards

The graph above is positively correlated. It
suggests that is you are better at Maths then you
are better at English.

Other examples would be:
Weight and height
Temperature and ice-cream sales
Time spend revising and exam score
Hand size and foot size

Make sure you also know
NEGATIVE CORRELATION: the dots go
diagonally downwards

Examples would include
Age and eye-sight
Amount of alcohol drunk and
coordination

And finally

STRENGTH OF CORRELATION

The closer the dots are to a straight line
THE STRONGER THE CORRELATION.

A perfectly straight line indicates PERFECT
CORRELATION

Ice cream sales and the number of shark attacks
on swimmers are correlated.
The number of cavities in elementary school
children and vocabulary size have a strong
positive correlation.

Clearly there is no real interaction between the
factors involved simply a co-incidence of the
data.
Once a correlation between two factors has been
established from experimental data it would be
necessary to advance the research to determine
what the causal relationship might be.