Talk:Association (statistics)

Is this the same thing as correlation?
The term ‘association’, as used in this article, seems like the same concept as ‘correlation’. Is that correct? If so, perhaps the articles should be merged. If there is a distinction between ‘association’ and ‘correlation’, then that distinction should be explained in this article. --Mathew5000 00:23, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, it's been nine years since this post and no one has offered a distinction between association and correlation. I don't think there is one, except that association is a bit more of an informal term. so as per the new merge tag, I'm going to merge this into the "correlation and dependence" article. Loraof (talk) 16:16, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Confusing
Wow. Could this article be any more confusing?

And btw I dont think association and correlation are synonymous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.211.149.55 (talk) 02:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Deleted text on causality
I have edited the article to focus on what "association" does mean, as opposed to the fact that it does not imply causality. I deleted the following text which possibly can be used somewhere else, e.g. in the article on correlation does not imply causation. Skbkekas (talk) 04:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

In formal statistics, correlation and association are related but not entirely overlapping concepts.

For example, the United Nations studied governmental failure&mdash;when governments fall or are overthrown and found that the best indicator of a government about to fall was the infant mortality rate. Causally, it may seem as though the dying children cause the government to fall but their mere association does not imply this.

Another example is the rates of ice cream consumption and murder, which exhibit a strong positive association. Which causes which; does eating ice cream cause murder or does murder make people eat ice cream? The answer is neither&mdash;increases in both ice cream consumption and murder are associated with hot weather.

Another perspective on the relationship between association and causality is that association does not imply a direct causal connection between the associated variables. If, however, association is nonrandom (i.e., not due purely to chance), then it implies that some causal mechanism is operative. Often, the nature of the causal mechanism underlying an association is the joint influence of one or more common causes operating on the variables in question. For example, both the increase in ice cream consumption and murder may occur during warm weather (a conclusion that would require further information to confirm or fail to confirm). If this were so, then the occurrence of the association between ice cream consumption and murder would be a manifestation of causation, but not in the simple, linear fashion that one initially might be tempted to assume. Associations of this sort, involving a third variable that jointly causes the association between the two original variables, is often termed "spurious association."