Aeon Video has a monthly newsletter!
Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Correlations can’t imply causation? Not so fast. A primer on causal networks
The old statistics axiom that correlation doesn’t imply causation is true, but causation can be drawn from more than one correlation. A clever and impressively efficient explainer, this short animation from MinutePhysics clears up a common maths misconception by showing how the concept of causal networks can be used to draw a straight line between correlations and causation via a process of elimination.
Video by MinutePhysics
Aeon is not-for-profit and free for everyone
Make a donationGet Aeon straight to your inbox
Join our newsletter
video
Metaphysics
Bertrand Russell wanted to kill off causation. Can contemporary philosophy rescue it?
8 minutes
video
Ethics
How many monkeys is it worth sacrificing to save a human life?
6 minutes
video
History of science
Bat-people on the Moon – what a famed 1835 hoax reveals about misinformation today
8 minutes
video
Human rights and justice
Thirty years after one teenager shot another, is it time to forgive?
28 minutes
video
Biotechnology
What it’s like to wear a prosthetic that ‘feels’
6 minutes
video
Chemistry
A square inch in a Petri dish becomes a grand stage for chemical transformations
4 minutes
video
Medicine
What is it like to be a paramedic, navigating human emergency?
17 minutes
video
Physics
The tangled tale of how physicists built a groundbreaking wormhole in a lab
17 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Teaching an AI to beat video games still takes human imagination
5 minutes