Friday, October 3, 2008

Causation vs. correlation

We are interested in causation but usually we mistakes it with correlation.

1. For example, wearing red clothes does not mean lucky. There might be several instances that they are occurred together but wearing red cloth does not cause you good luck or bad luck.

2. In order to test if one thing causes another we can apply the control group in experiments like the way they test new drugs.

-For example, a new drug for treating depression is being developed, however we need to test if it causes the patient no more depression? We do this by having two groups of "depressed" patients. One is given the new drug and the other is given a placebo (i.e. the drug is just a candy). By analysing the results from these two groups we can decide if the new drug is the cause for treating the patient or not.

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