Establishing a Correlation

Comments

• steve-10 Alum Member

  November 2016 192 karma

  About your last paragraph: we do know that middle/low range eaters were less likely to feel depressed. Your statement of ignorance about the middle/low range eaters implies that in light of statement 1 this could be true: "Low/middle range choc. eaters are equally or more likely to feel depressed than those who ate the most." I think it must be false.
• SeattlesBest Alum Member

  November 2016 edited November 2016 165 karma

  My question is not whether "low/middle range chocolate eaters are equally or more likely to feel depressed than those who ate the most"
  
  I'm asking what if "low range chocolate eaters felt more depressed than middle range chocolate eaters"?
• 3 Likes

  Cant Get Right Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 🍌 7Sage Tutor

  November 2016 27902 karma

  @SeattlesBest said:
  1. Those who ate the most chocolate were the most likely to feel depressed.
  2. The more chocolate one consumed, the more likely he/she felt depressed.
  

  In statement 1, we are establishing a set: "Those who ate the most chocolate." Anyone who falls into this set is then assigned the characteristic: "most likely to feel depressed."
  
  In statement 2, we're doing something quite different. We're establishing a scale upon which every chocolate eater will fall. The higher up on this scale that one falls, the more likely one is to feel depressed.
  
  Very different. I imagine in statement 1 that those set of people just ate WAY too much chocolate. I did that a couple of Christmases ago actually and can confirm that I was quite depressed for a couple of days. But in that example, my depression came from crossing the threshold of eating more chocolate than can be comfortably eaten. Before I crossed that threshold and entered into the set of "those who ate the most chocolate," I would actually say my likelihood of depression decreased. The failure to account for the possibility of such a threshold is what makes statement 2 unable to function the same as statement 1.
• SeattlesBest Alum Member

  November 2016 edited November 2016 165 karma

  @"Cant Get Right" said:
  Very different.
  

  Does statement 1 establish a positive correlation between chocolate consumption and depression? (JY says so in PT72 S2 Q14 explanation)
  If so, why does JY say the statement "Ones who improved the most were the ones who learned to write the most automatically" in PT47 S1 Q26 does not establish a correlation?
  
  Thank you so much for your help!