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

Went into the University for the first time

I went into the university for the first time today. It is less than a kilometer from the apartment. I had to go there to finalize certain documents regarding my accomodation.

I arrived at the university during the lunch time and hence I had to wait for a couple of hours for the office staffs to return. During the time, I roamed around the campus. The place is aesthetically pleasing, however, it is pretty small, especially since where I did my bachelor's, IIT Patna, had a campus spread across over 500 acres.

I also went to the nearby Lidl to get a few frozen pizzas. I had that for lunch, evening snack and dinner. I had thought about cooking something for dinner, but I felt a bit lazy to do the same. However, I did modify the last frozen pizza by adding some mushrooms, pizza sauce and pepper. I think this could be a good trick moving forward - buy a few frozen pizzas and chopped vegetables from Lidl and fuse them. I think this would make the pizzas a bit more healthier and the effort that I have to put in would be minimal.

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