| Mise said: @mrstickball:
In other words, there can be no conclusion made regarding the existence or the direction of a cause and effect relationship only from the fact that A and B are correlated. Determining whether there is an actual cause and effect relationship requires further investigation, even when the relationship between A and B is statistically significant, a large effect size is observed, or a large part of the variance is explained. Guns aren't the only things that are used kill people, and suicides are still crimes, albeit victimless. And the profileration of firearms isn't the only thing that could reduce murder rates, provided it does that in the first place. EDIT: Bloody quotes. EDIT 2: And yes, it also applies to the graph I posted as well, even though the two compared variables are more closely related IMO. |
See now your argueing his points for him.
Other things can be used to kill people for example.
His graph is the more accurate because it shows that in the absense of guns, people will kill with whatever they can get their hands on.
I mean, someone with a graph like yours could eaisly make the arguement that we need to ban cars because there are more car accidences in places with more cars...
Or that we should ban little statues of liberty since more people are injured by them in areas where more of them are prevelant.
Correlation doesn't prove causation....
but lack of correlation does prove lack of causation more or less.
