“Ice cream sales cause drownings — they correlate.”
Usage Entry 1185 / 1605 60-second read
Cause vs. Correlation
A producing relationship versus a pattern of co-occurrence.
The comparisoni
“Ice cream sales correlate with drownings — both rise in summer. Neither causes the other; the cause is the season.”
The ruleii
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CAUSE = produces. CORRELATION = co-occurs.
CAUSE means one thing produces another — counterfactually, if the cause hadn't happened, neither would the effect. CORRELATION is just a statistical pattern — two things tend to rise or fall together. Confounding variables often explain correlation without causation.
Memory aidiii
Remember it like this
Causation implies correlation; correlation rarely implies causation.