[vhawk01]

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what you should try to do is poke fun at how people can often times confuse correlation with causation. i'm sure you can think of some funny examples, and possible demostrate it yourself (maybe go around campus asking random people questions, and tape it).

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Its funny, because my first instinct was to poke fun at people who think correlation DOESN'T imply causation. Its a mantra that is repeated by anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of stats, especially when any new study comes out, but I don't think people really know what they are saying. Correlation doesn't imply causation, if by imply you mean prove. But it certainly does lend support to the idea of causation, and it makes that specific cause more likely to be the actual cause. It is always possible that there is some third thing that causes both, thus the correlation, but such is science...there will ALWAYS be possible additional causes. So, if two things are highly correlated, obviously you need to consider the direction of the causation, and consider any possible other factors which are driving the correlation, but it still really is evidence for causation.

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The two examples given in this thread are a perfect dichotomy to explain this. In the first example height and peeing standing up are correlated, but being tall obviously isn't the cause. Statistically being male causes one to be taller and is obviously the cause for the standers. In the second, height and salary are correlated (or at least perceived salary), and height is the cause. While there may be sociological and evolutionary explanations as to why it's the cause, those explanations don't cause the above average height itself.

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Good point. My biggest problem is that, when I said my prof is eccentric, I meant like Nathan Lane eccentric. He's really over the top, and put a lot of pressure on us to make this fun and creative and interactive. Fun, creative and interactive are about the three most dreaded words when it comes to me and projects/presentations. I haven't decided which is better:

Do a normal, straight presentation and then hit him in the face with a water balloon and make sound effect noises

or

Hit him with the waterballoon first.