Week 10 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 10 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 44–52 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (17–20 min total)

• CRITICAL THINKING - Fundamentals: Correlation and Causation — Wireless Philosophy
• CRITICAL THINKING - Fallacies: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc — Wireless Philosophy
• Correlation and causation — Australian Bureau of Statistics

① A pattern is not yet a cause: correlation and hidden factors

Chapter 10, Section “Tell the pattern from the cause: correlation and causation” · Session 1, Segment 1, “A pattern is not yet a cause” · Remember: before you read a pattern as a cause, check for a third factor behind both, an arrow running backward, and plain chance.

• CRITICAL THINKING - Fundamentals: Correlation and Causation — Wireless Philosophy — a seven-minute talk that opens with a student who always aces a math test on sunny days and asks what really explains the pattern; this builds on Week 9's work with samples, since a causal claim compares two groups that each have to be judged. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)
• Correlation and causation — Australian Bureau of Statistics — a national statistics agency's short guide to the difference between two things moving together and one causing the other, with a seasonal example much like the chapter's hot-weather table; skip the part on measuring correlation with a number. Use it while working through the Week-10 module overview. (reading, 4–7 min)
• Correlation — Math is Fun — an illustrated page built around ice-cream sales and temperature; read the opening example and the section titled Correlation Isn't Causation, and skip the calculation steps, which this course does not use. (reading, 3–5 min)
• Confounding Variables in Research: What They Are & How to Control Them — The Research Vault — a five-minute explainer that uses a workplace software study to show a hidden factor, faster computers, standing behind both the cause and the effect; listen for how random assignment spreads that factor evenly. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)

② Order and chains: after this, and the slippery slope

Chapter 10, Section “Key the order fallacy: after this, therefore because of this” · Session 1, Segment 4, “First is not the same as because” · Remember: coming first does not make something a cause, and a predicted chain of events is only as strong as its weakest link.

• CRITICAL THINKING - Fallacies: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc — Wireless Philosophy — a six-minute walk through a roommate blamed for a broken bike chain because he rode the bike last; compare it with the chapter's lucky-socks passage and name what evidence each case is missing. (video, 6 min) (captions: creator)
• Slippery Slope: Logical Fallacies — Eternal Thinker — a six-minute explainer that tests a chain of predicted steps one link at a time, using a warning about failing one class as its main case; as you watch, mark which links have evidence behind them. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Finding causes fairly: Mill's methods and controlled comparisons

Chapter 10, Section “Find the cause by comparing cases: Mill's methods” · Session 2, Segment 6, “Mill's methods” · Remember: agreement looks for what every case shares, difference looks for the one factor that differs, and assignment by chance handles the factors no one listed.

• Unit 5.2: Mills Methods — Michael FitzGerald — a six-minute lesson that works the methods of agreement and difference, and then the joint method, on a group of friends who fell ill after a restaurant meal, and closes with short examples of residues and concomitant variation; compare its restaurant case with the chapter's potluck, and note its closing caution that the methods work only on the possible causes you have already listed. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)
• Randomized Control Trials and Confounding — Global Health with Greg Martin — a four-minute talk on why assigning people to groups by chance controls for hidden factors, even ones nobody thought to measure. Stop here before risks and base rates; next week takes those up. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
• Clinical Trial Randomization — National Cancer Institute — a federal health agency's brief page on assigning trial participants to groups by chance so the comparison stays fair; read the short text and notice the word it uses for the comparison group. (reading, 1–2 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Post Hoc (Fallacies) — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — the reference entry's short paragraph on leaping from "this came first" to "this caused it", with one compact example about seats at a ball game; read that paragraph and skip the rest of the long list for now. (reading, 2–4 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com