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Points of Significance

Association, correlation and causation

Nature Methods volume 12, pages 899–900 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Correlation implies association, but not causation. Conversely, causation implies association, but not correlation.

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Figure 1: Correlation is a type of association and measures increasing or decreasing trends quantified using correlation coefficients.
Figure 2: Correlation coefficients fluctuate in random data, and spurious correlations can arise.
Figure 3: Effect of noise and sample size on Pearson's correlation coefficient r.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Naomi Altman is a Professor of Statistics at The Pennsylvania State University.,

    Naomi Altman

  2. Martin Krzywinski is a staff scientist at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.,

    Martin Krzywinski

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  1. Naomi Altman
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  2. Martin Krzywinski
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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Altman, N., Krzywinski, M. Association, correlation and causation. Nat Methods 12, 899–900 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3587

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