Question

Consider the following statement: "I examined the statistics for our basketball team’s wins last year and found that, when the third team played more, the winning margin increased. If the coach played the third team more, we would win by a bigger margin." Evaluate this statement.

Answer 1

The statement can be evaluated by saying that a large lead that was to be chased by the third team before the game ended made them play more and caused a large margin. Here, the association is not causation.

Explanation:

• The examination of the statistics done by someone who seems to be one of the players is incorrect.
• It is so because though there is an apparent correlation between two different variables of the study, it has no role to play in the result of the study.
• The lead margin secured by the third team and the overall lead of the teams that played under one coach cannot be said to have influenced each other.