Have you heard that ice cream consumption is linked to shark attacks?
Apparently Jaws has a lethal appetite for mint chocolate chip. Figure 4-1 visualizes this proposed relationship.
Figure 4-1. The proposed relationship between ice cream consumption and shark attacks
“Not so,” you may retort. “This does not necessarily mean that shark
attacks are triggered by ice cream consumption.”
“It could be,” you reason, “that as the outside temperature increases, more ice
cream is consumed. People also spend more time near the ocean when the weather is warm, and that coincidence leads to more shark attacks.”
“Correlation Does Not Imply Causation”
You’ve likely heard repeatedly that “correlation does not imply
causation.”
In Chapter 3, you learned that causation is a fraught expression in statistics. We really only reject the null hypothesis because we simply don’t have all the data to claim causality for sure. That semantic difference aside, does correlation have anything to do with causation? The standard expression somewhat oversimplifies their relationship; you’ll see why in this chapter using the tools
of inferential statistics you picked up earlier.
This will be our final chapter conducted primarily in Excel. After that,
you will have sufficiently grasped the framework of analytics to be
ready to be move into R and Python.
Introducing Correlation ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month, and much more.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
