From Correlation to Causation through stories and math

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Correlation and causation are two concepts that people often mixup in their minds. I must admit that I myself have been guilty about this, and it unlikely that I would ever entirely grow out of it as it is wired deeply into our psychology. Let me use this article to briefly emphasise what the concepts of correlation and causation means, some interesting stories that have emerged from people misunderstanding these concepts and an algorithm that attempts to find causal relationship using correlation information. Here is a story that I heard a professor of mine, Prof. Dr. Ernst-Jan Camiel Wit, tell us during a lecture. There was a school that was involved in a study to see if providing free mid-day meals to students, which they could choose to be subscribed to this or not. At the end of the study, both the students who subscribed to it and did not where tested for different health indicators. It was observed that the students who chose to have meals from the programme had poorer health
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Preparing my journey to Switzerland

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My master's program in Computational Science at Università della Svizzera italiana is scheduled to start in the third week of September. I have already scheduled my flights and I shall be arriving in Zurich on the 15th. Since my last day at MathWorks is done, the only task that I have left to do is preparing for the journey: packing, getting the papers in order, purchasing the currency, etc.

I have been informed that Switzerland is an expensive country to live in. Since I am planning on living mostly on what I have saved in the past couple of years, I have been looking into estimating the approximate living expenses that I would encounter.

For starters, I have been trying to find the sweet spot between good nutrition, less expensive and easy to cook food. I was informed that there is a Lidl supermarket less than a kilometer from the university and it offers grocery products for a cheap price. I found Lidl Switzerland's website to have an understanding of the price for different items and I find that it is cheaper for a vegetarian to live in Switzerland than a non-vegetarian. Perhaps I should reconsider my dietary habits. I have also been looking into different recipes on YouTube that I could potentially cook at low effort.

I have started packing, and I am trying to see how much masalas and spices I can fit in. I have heard that these could be either expensive or unavailable in Switzerland. Chicken masala, biriyani masala and coriander powder has been procured in huge quantities along with ginger garlic paste, chilly powder and turmeric powder. I also need to pack my clothes. I hope I would be able to find the right amount of quantities that I need to take for each items.

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