Correlation vs causation

We just finished our science project on correlation and causation, and as always, it’s time to do a blog post, so let’s hop right into it! So, the premise of the project was “correlation vs causation”. Before we were even starting our milestones, we were explained what correlation and causation where. Basically, correlation is a mutual relationship or connection between two things, and causation is when something causes something else. Now, the whole point of our project is that correlation does not imply causation, so that even if it looks like this causes that, it may not always be the case. Anyways, before we started the first milestone we were put into pairs, and my partner was Holly. Our first project milestone was mostly to help us get a grip on the concept, we where put into randomly selected temporary groups and had to come up with questions we had about the project. Then we had to make a mind map with a bunch of questions from our group and other groups that we would hope to answer by the end of the project.

The next milestone a little practice for us on conducting a survey. We had to get the height and hand size of everyone in the class, and once we did that to find out if there is a correlation between hand size and height. Long story short, there was a correlation, but we couldn’t confirm if there was any causation.

Our next milestone mainly helped us understand the concept of correlation vs causation better so that we could do better on our final project. We had to take a quiz that would supposedly calculate how tall we would be when we were older. As a class, we discussed the quiz and of the correlations in the quiz implied causation. We also were given a Wikipedia article to read more on the specifics of correlation and causation. Overall, this was a very helpful milestone as it really cemented my understanding of the concept.

The next milestone was the start of our final presentation, it was a plan on what questions we would ask in our survey. In our final product, we needed to talk about two correlations and one causation, so we needed to come up with some questions that we knew would give us those results. We also had to predict if there would be causation in the questions we asked and how we would use a chart to plot the data, but ultimately only four questions would make it into our final presentation. Our next milestone was similar, it was a basic layout of what our presentation would look like when it was complete, this was just so we would know what we were doing in advance.

Our final milestone was the presentation. With our survey plan, and our survey data we had collected over a few days with a google form, me and Holly finished our presentation:

I think we did well because we completed all the requirements, we had the two correlations and causation, we had a slide addressing any potential bias in the survey, and I think we made the slideshow look pretty good as well. Afterwards, we had to revise our mind map with all our questions answered, and my finished one is right here.

So overall, I learned a lot in this project, as I am confident in the concept of correlation vs causation, and I am confident that I showed proficiency in all the curricular competencies we were being assessed on. This was a really interesting project, and I hope we will do more like it in the future, as it really pushed my learning forward.