Tag: Correlation

Cropped photo of businessman analyzing business diagram, marketing statistics and finance market graphs on laptop monitor in the office.

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Gary Smith
Date
September 25, 2023

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
AI, Algorithms, causation, Correlation, data, Graphs}

Confusing Correlation with Causation

_{Computers are amazing. But they can't distinguish between correlation and causation.} _{Gary Smith
September 25, 2023

7

Artificial Intelligence}

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are terrific at discovering statistical correlations but terrible at distinguishing between correlation and causation. A computer algorithm might find a correlation between how often a person has been in an automobile accident and the words they post on Facebook, being a good software engineer and visiting certain websites, and making loan payments on time and keeping one’s phone fully charged. However, computer algorithms do not know what any of these things are and consequently have no way of determining whether these are causal relationships (and therefore useful predictors) or fleeting coincidences (that are useless predictors). If the program is black box, then humans cannot intervene and declare that these are almost certainly irrelevant coincidences. Even if Read More ›

Quitting smoking - male hand crushing cigarette

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News
Date
December 10, 2020

Categorized
Education

Tagged
causation, Correlation, Gary Smith, John Ioannidis, Logic, Michael Egnor, Robert J. Marks, Spurious Correlations (website), Tobacco}

Yellow Fingers Do Not Cause Lung Cancer

_{Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and computer engineer Bob Marks look at the ways Big Data can mislead us into mistaking incidental events for causes} _{News
December 10, 2020

6

Education}

It’s easy to explain what “information” is if we don’t think much about it. But what if we ask a student, what does your term paper weigh? How much energy does it consume? More or less matter and energy than, say, lightning striking a tree? Of course, the student will protest, “But that’s not the point! It’s my term paper.” Exactly. So information is very different from matter and energy. It means something. Realizing that information is different from matter and energy can help us understand issues like the difference between the causes of a problem (causation) and circumstances that may be associated with the problem but do not cause it (correlation). In last week’s podcast, “Robert J. Marks on Read More ›

Scrabble pieces with numbers and letters

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Brendan Dixon
Date
January 29, 2019

Categorized
Machine Learning, Social Factors

Tagged
Algorithms, causation, Correlation, criminal justice, Machine Learning}

The Numbers Don’t Speak for Themselves

_{The patterns uncovered by machine learning may reflect a larger reality or just a bias in gathering data} _{Brendan Dixon
January 29, 2019

5

Machine Learning, Social Factors}

Because Machine Learning is opaque—even experts cannot clearly explain how a system arrived at a conclusion—we treat it as magic. Therefore, we should mistrust the systems until proven innocent (and correct).