Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Confounding factor
In statistics, a confounding factor is a factor which is the common cause of two things that may falsely appear to be in a causal relationship. It is the cause of a spurious relationship.
For example, ice cream consumption and murder rates are highly correlated. Now, does ice cream incite murder or does murder increase the demand for ice cream? Neither: they are joint effects of a common cause or confounding factor, namely, hot weather.
See also
10-26-2009 08:16:03
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The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details