Assignment Directions
1. Answer the following critical thinking questions in this forum. Feel free to copy the questions and paste them into your reply so that you cover each one. Use complete sentences and proper statistical terminology in all posts.
2. Read the instructor's response to the questions.
3. Read the answers of some of your peers and reply to your post with any corrections.
Questions:
1. Give an example of variables that have correlation but no causation exists. Explain why these variables have correlation. Could there be a lurking variable that these variables are both tied to, or do you think this correlation was caused by p-hacking? [2-3 sentences or a graph]
a. 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, 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).
2. How do we decide if the correlation coefficient is close enough to declare that there is correlation? [1 sentence]