Question

1- During calendar year 2016, a city in Canada carefully collected data every day for hundreds of different variables. Statisticians noticed a positive correlation between the variables X = # of people using the snowmobile trail and Y = amount of propane required to heat the public library. Your friend says “this doesn’t make any sense – on a day where we observe an increase in the number of people using the snowmobile trail why would that suddenly cause people at the public library to turn up the heat?”. Briefly respond to your friend and explain what may be causing the correlation.

Answer 1

The correlation between the variables is caused by another factor which is environmemt temprature of that city in canada. This is because as the temprature drops, more people will feel cold and turn up the heat at library to be able to study comfortable. Also as the temprature drops, more snow would be there and hence snowmoving trail could be done, so more would want to enjoy it. This could be one of the possible explainations that they are not correlated but some third factor is affecting them both