Hello everyone, I was going through a Vlog, where I came across the terms and concept of "Correlation and Causation". Can anyone give examples of "Correlation and Causation concepts in Hydrology"
[Correlation means there is a relationship or pattern between the values of two variables. A scatterplot displays data about two variables as a set of points in the xy-plane and is a useful tool for determining if there is a correlation between the variables.
Causation means that one event causes another event to occur.]
Thank you in Advance
Hello Mr Pradeepkumar,
Correlation and Causation are different concepts and correlation does not strictly imply causation. Correlation might be an indirect effect of other covariates. Ideally to find causation, one would need to identify all covariates and make perfect experimental setting to exclude these third variables and then identify causation between two variables. Statistically speaking there are methods like Instrumental Variables, Generalized Additive causal models etc, which go a step towards finding causation but its only a Statistical step. Experimental steps should try to isolate the cofounding effects and see how excluding certain variables affects the setting and in perfectly isolated setting a causation might be found, but this is a very rare situation in nature, and experiments are specifically designed for this.
Correlation is a mathematical concept, which may be deduced from data but may or may not be true in the real world. It does not say which is the cause and which is the effect. Causation on the other hand is a physics-based concept, that implies physical phenomena affecting one another. Regression (not correlation) analysis is better suited to identify causation. Interestingly, and in line with physics, regression of x on y is different from regression of y on x. Both concepts are widely misused in hydrology.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Composition Studies
- Publication