Question

One paragraph providing an example where two variables are

correlated because of an omitted variable, not because one causes
the other.

Answer 1

One example of correlation without causation is the relationship between ice cream sales and shark attacks. Both variables tend to increase during the summer months, but this does not mean that buying ice cream causes shark attacks, or vice versa. Instead, there is a third variable that affects both of them: temperature. Higher temperatures make people more likely to buy ice cream and go swimming in the ocean, which increases the risk of shark attacks. Therefore, temperature is an omitted variable that confounds the correlation between ice cream sales and shark attacks.