Correlation vs Causation
Two things happening together doesn't mean one caused the other — recognise the difference between correlation and causation before drawing conclusions
Typical age: 8–10 years
“If your child noticed that children who eat breakfast tend to do better at school, would they understand that breakfast might not be the cause — there could be another reason both things are true?”
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Needs first
- Describing Rules & Patterns
Evaluating whether a pattern is truly causal requires the universal generalisation habit — asking whether the rule you think you've spotted actually holds across cases
- Could there be another explanation?REQUIRED
Recognising that correlation is not causation requires the habit of generating alternative explanations — the correlation/causation distinction is a specific case of asking 'is there another explanation?'
Unlocks next
- Science Can Be RevisedREQUIRED
Understanding that scientific knowledge is provisional requires seeing concrete examples of how apparent patterns and causal claims get revised — the correlation/causation distinction is one key mechanism
- Evidence Supporting Ideas
Evaluating the strength of scientific evidence requires recognising when apparent correlations might not be causal — a key dimension of evidence quality