What haunts statisticians at night

We all want cause and effect, but there's something that will almost always get in the way of well-meaning statisticians.

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This video was sponsored by Brilliant.

[very-normal]

forgot to pin this, don't shame me Brilliant lol

[Vaeinoe]

My favourite example of differentiating correlation and causation is that even though firefighters and housefires are often seen together, it's pretty clear the fire department didn't cause the fire

[AmberSZ]

A couple years ago I read a survey of sci-comm articles that actually found they were too conservative on describing things as correlation/causation. People had the correlation =/= causation warning drilled into them to the point that they were describing results which by the study design could be attributed to causation as "just" correlation!

[blakaligula]

As someone in social science (public policy), this is constantly on my mind. 'All of Statistics' has great chapters on causation and DAGs, even covering continuous causal variables. It also points to other great sources on causal analysis for anyone curious.

[BradyPostma]

I like how you quote the cartoon _The Boondocks_ about unknown unknowns, in the part where they quote Donald Rumsfeld who was paraphrasing NASA administrator William Graham, who was referencing the work of Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham's work developing the Johan window in 1955.

I love how real expert research gradually enters the pop culture zeitgeist!

[shreeniwaz]

One of the best explanations on basic concepts which also sheds light on the intricacies related..

[florentinudrea]

please, PLEASE don't stop doing these videos! I love them!

[InOtherNews]

Genuinely loving the stuff here about theory and practice. Keep it up!

[figmundsreud]

Just some words auf caution about the statement "causation implies correlation". This does of course not mean that a strong linear bivariate correlation is necessary for a causal effect. Confounders can also push the empirical correlation close to 0 with there still being a causal effect

[PeloquinDavid]

I have a quibble: causation often involves correlation, but there are situations where it doesn’t. You have to take the functional form into account as well. For example, if the underlying function is a more or less symmetric "U"-shaped one (e.g. a quadratic one) over the range for which you have data, you can have strong causal relation with little or no correlation (which is designed to assess linear relationships but can also detect monotonic ones, albeit with a loss of accuracy/"explanatory power").

Obviously, the equivalent of the correlation coefficient in a general regression model (one that takes account of real non-linear interaction effects), the R-square, does enable you to get a good sense of the explanatory power of non-linear relationships - albeit not without their own issues with confounding factors. But it remains somewhat misleading to assert a clear one-way relationship between causality and "correlation".

[andresfelipehiguera]

I needed this explanations long time ago! Thanks. I loved the simulations to show the impact of ‘C’

[Agent-cipher-]

Hi, I just want to say that you and your videos are a blessing to me and many others! Cheers man!

[justdave]

That boondock's clip lol.
This is probably my favorite stats page.
Keep doing what you're doing.

[superuser]

I’m so glad I double-majored with a stats concentration… This was one of the best things I covered in our undergrad ANOVA course.

[requetevision]

YOU TRICKED ME I subliminally absorbed your “example” of clicking this video to SUBSCRIBE, to see what effect there was, and now I am subscribed!!! (Happily 😊 )

[dumbpenguin]

This is the best explanation of a counterfactual I've heard. Made it very simple. 🎉

[lok]

My question is, if excluding confounders leads to ommitted variable bias and including confounders leads to multicollinearity (due to the high correlation between the confounder variable and the other explanatory variable/s), what can one do?

[sitrakaforler]

As a statistician i wanna say "congrats and thank you too had shared such a great video🎉🎉

[allieindigo]

I know this might be a silly question, but is your voice ai-gen? It just sounds so much like it, especially at 1:47. Sorry, if it isn't, that's my bad.

[travisretriever]

It keeps them up at night the way those confounding Dover Boys drove that one guy to drink!