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Essential Understandings
Concrete:
- State the cause and effect relationship between two variables.
- State the cause and effect relationship between two variables in reverse.
- Recognize examples of correlation with causation (e.g., If you push an object, force is correlated with the distance it moves and the distance the object moved is caused by the force.).
- Recognize examples of correlation without causation (e.g., The distance a rolled ball travels is correlated with how much time passes, but the distance it travels is not caused by time.).
- Understand that the cause and effect relationship should be true for the situation and its reverse to have causation.
- Understand that a correlation is a relationship between two or more variables.
- Understand that a high correlation does not imply causation (i.e., We observe a very strong correlation when comparing US highway fatality rates and lemons imported from Mexico (R2 = 0.97). However, importing lemons does not cause traffic fatalities.).
Clusters should not be sorted from Major to Supporting and then taught in that order. To do so would strip the coherence of the mathematical ideas and miss the opportunity to enhance the major work of the grade with the supporting clusters.
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Lesson Plan
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Lesson Plan
This lesson introduces the students to the concepts of correlation and causation, and the difference between the two. The main learning objective is to encourage students to think critically about various possible explanations for a correlation, and to evaluate their plausibility, rather than passively taking presented information on faith. To give students the right tools for such analysis, the lesson covers most common reasons behind a correlation, and different possible types of causation.
Type: Lesson Plan
