In the simplest terms, causation is WHY something happens. Cause answers “why and
how” and effect answers “what”. The cause and effect relationship can be seen everywhere.
For example, when Chicago high school students were offered an incentive for passing their
classes (cause) the amount of students advancing to the next grade increased about 5% (effect).
Correlation is often confused with causation which leads to a logical fallacy, cum hoc ergo
propter hoc, Latin for “with this, therefore because of this” which basically means that just
because two factors correlate, doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other. For
example, during summer ice cream sales increase (due to the heat), crime rates also tend to
increase during the summer, therefore once may conclude that increased ice cream sales leads
to increased crime. This, obviously, is not true; while both ice cream sales and crime rates
increase during summer (they correlate) neither directly affects the other.
Causation may not be obvious when first evaluating a situation, the majority if the time
it takes some amount of investigation into something before its true cause can be determined.
The idea that a person’s name can determine whether or not they are successful is an example
of this. It may seem that the most successful people tend to have popular names when in
reality, a person’s success cannot be attributed to their name, rather, it can be attributed to
their upbringing. A white child raised in a two parent household in a well to do part of town is
more likely to be given a name like “John” and more likely to lead a successful life. On the other
hand, a black kid raised by a single mom in the ghetto given a name like “Temptress” or