Thinking and reasoning

Many people, and most newspapers, confuse causality and correlation from time to time. A correlation is a statistical statement referring to the degree of relationship between two things, but id does not mean that one causes the other. Technically, a correlation is a statement about how closely the occurrences between two things fall along a single straingt line. The degree to which this happens is expressed.

If a reasonable high correlation is found between two things, after many measures or observations have been made, we are able to make predictions about the likelihood of one thing occurring if the other occurs, but we cannot claim that one causes the other. To illustrate this: there is a high correlation between people suffering heart attacks on a single day in Sydney and the melting of tar on the roads. Should we conclude that one causes the other? Does the melting tar give off a poisonous gas, or something? Not likely. These two events correlate, but in this case both (we know) are cause by a third distinct factor – high termperature.

Now we can differ a correlations and the other things that we though before is a correlation ship. Not every cases happen in a same time have a correlation ship.

One of the most common complaints that mothers make about their young children is that they wake regularly at night.

Such children about one in five of all babies are exhausting, and their persistent waking, often accompanied by incessant crying, can be a serious problem. In a number of popular manuals on how to bring up babies, suggested that night waking can be avoided by leaving the child to cry or by other such rigid procedures. This is wrong. Parental mishandling does not cause night waking and parents should not feel that they are to blame if their baby wakes at night.

There was no question of this ‘creating’ children who were likely to cry a lot and hence, perhaps, cry more often at night on waking. It seems to reflect a different character in the crying of these children, perhaps as a result of the events surrounding their birth, and the mothers seem to know that this crying will not be stopped by leaving the baby alone.

The study also suggests that night waking could be predicted at birth and such help as is available begin right away. This, best of all, would arm the mother against people who try to tell her that she herself to blame.