Every person that dies has been inhaling oxygen in small amounts every day for decades in most cases. It is also highly addictive, the withdrawal symptoms are fatal. Can you conclude that oxygen is a deadly drug? Nooooooo! That would be absurd. But people continue to use similar logic in correlation when trying to draw conclusions when the claims are not so ridiculous.
Often a person will look at the patterns of information or data, looking to see the relationship between them, trying to find the connection where one variable’s existence is dependent upon the existence of the second. However, even if there is a correlation, it does not automatically confirm causation. And if there is also an error in perception of the correlation, it will lead to errors in determining cause and effect. This would be illusory correlation.
All too often people look for evidence and cases that will support relationships between the variables so they will be closer to resolving the problem or arriving at a conclusion. Let’s say a doctor is looking at cases of 100 patients, checking for a specific symptom and whether it matches a disease. If half the patients had the symptom and half of those also had the disease, is there a strong relationship between the symptom and the disease to provide solid diagnosis?
To properly analyze the situation, one must look at the rest of the data:
100 Patients | Symptom | No symptom
Disease | 25 | 25
No disease | 25 | 25
Just be looking at the other combinations there doesn’t appear to be any pattern to warrant a conclusion at all.
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