Correlation vs.
Causation
What is the difference?
Causation
• Causation means that one thing causes
another
– You hit your finger with a hammer so your finger
swells. Your finger swelling is CAUSED by the
hammer hitting it.
Correlation
• Correlation is a concept from statistics that
measures the relationship between two
things.
– A positive correlation means that when one thing
goes up, the other goes up too.
– A negative correlation is the opposite, when one
goes up, the other goes down
Can you tell the two apart?
• The temperature outside and ice cream sales?
– Correlation (they are related but hot weather doesn’t CAUSE ice cream
sales to increase)
• The number of firemen fighting a fire and the size of the fire?
– Correlation (The bigger the fire, the more firemen; however, this
doesn’t mean that bringing more firemen will cause the size of the fire
to increase).
• Not studying for a test and getting a low grade?
– Correlation (they are related but you COULD make a good grade and
not study, right?)
• Exercising and burning calories?
– Causation (burning calories is the RESULT of the exercise; in other
words, exercising CAUSED you to burn calories)
Correlation Coefficients
• Correlation coefficients are used in statistics
to measure how strong a relationship is
between two variables.
• The value of r is such that -1 < r < +1. The +
and – signs are used for positive linear
correlations and negative linear correlations,
respectively.
Positive, Negative or No
• Positive correlation: If x and y have a strong positive linear
correlation, r is close to +1. An r value of exactly +1 indicates a
perfect positive fit. Positive values indicate a relationship
between x and y variables such that as values for x increases,
values for y also increase.
• Negative correlation: If x and y have a strong negative linear
correlation, r is close to -1. An r value of exactly -1 indicates a
perfect negative fit. Negative values indicate a relationship
between x and y such that as values for x increase, values for y
decrease.
• No correlation: If there is no linear correlation or a weak linear
correlation, r is close to 0. A value near zero means that there
is a random, nonlinear relationship between the two variables
Way More Info Than You Want:
Correlation Coefficient, r : The quantity r, called the linear
correlation coefficient, measures the strength and the direction
of a linear relationship between two variables. The linear
correlation coefficient is sometimes referred to as the Pearson
product moment correlation coefficient in honor of its developer
Karl Pearson. The mathematical formula for computing r
is:
where n is the number of pairs of data.
(Aren't you glad you have a graphing calculator that computes
this formula?)
Where do you find “r” on the
calculator?
• The correlation coefficient, r,
will appear on the screen that
shows the regression equation
information
• In addition to appearing with the
regression information, the values
r and r 2 can be found under VARS,
#5 Statistics → EQ #7 r and #8 r 2 .
Meaning of r values
• A correlation greater than 0.8 is generally
described as strong, whereas a correlation
less than 0.5 is generally described as weak.
Describe as weak or strong and
positive or negative
• -0.4?
– Weak negative (negative sign shows negative
correlation and 0.4 is less than 0.5 so weak)
• 0.9?
– Strong positive (greater than 0.8 so strong)
• -0.87?
– Strong negative
Graphs for Correlation
-
Summary
• The closer your correlation coefficient is to 1 or -1
the more linear your data will look when
graphed.
• When r = 1, the data would be perfectly linear
with a positive slope
• When r = -1, the data would be perfectly linear
with a negative slope
• The closer the r value gets to zero (from either
direction, negative or positive), the weaker the
correlation is.
• When r= 0, there would be no correlation.
