Question

Lisa did a study for her health class about the

effects of cartoon watching on foot size. Based on
a graph of her data, she finds that there was an
inverse relationship between foot size and hours
spent watching cartoons per week. She concludes
that "cartoon watching causes small feet." Is this
true? Explain any flaws in Lisa's reasoning.

Answer 1

Answer: The two pieces of data correlate, not causate as Lisa is trying to imply.

Explanation:

The graph shows that people with smaller feet tend to watch cartoons more often, this doesn't mean that one of these causes the other (causation), it is mostly coincidental (correlation). This could be because of lots of children watching cartoons and children having smaller feet than adults do, but people with big feet can watch cartoons, and people with small feet don't all watch cartoons. Lisa is simply misinterpreting two pieces of coincidental data.