A government agency publishes ratings of airlines, ranking highest the airlines that have the smallest proportion of ...
Lauren-AuJuly 11, 2019
Cause & Effect vs. Correlation Questions
@Mehran @lsatmax Hi there can any one please help clarify the differences between Cause&Effect vs. Correlation questions? Like do you have any tips or tricks in being able to better recognize the difference between these two when looking at a question stem? I think I'm just a bit confused and don't always know when I'm seeing a correlation question. Thank you!
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Great question. Cause and effect questions are generally showing you a cause and effect in the stimulus and asking some sort of question about it.
With questions that have correlations, there are usually two things that are correlated with one another. Often times on correlation questions, the argument will be mistaking correlation for causation. There can be a lot of overlap between these topics, so it's really hard to just look at the question stem and be able to determine whether or not the argument is about cause and effect, correlation, or both. What you need to do is read the argument carefully in the stimulus—this will help you to see what's going on and whether or not the stimulus is dealing with cause and effect, correlation, neither, or both.
For this question, I'd consider it to be a weaken question, as we're looking to invalidate the use of the ratings for the agency's purpose, so we're weakening the chances of it being a useful tool.
Hope this helps. Let us know if you'd like any more clarification!
