Mr. brown has gathered evidence that students' self-esteem is negatively correlated with their typical levels of anxiety. before he uses this evidence to conclude that high self-esteem reduces anxiety, mr. brown should be reminded that:
Mr. brown should be reminded that correlation does not prove causation. The presence of 2 objects/occurrences at the same time does not necessarily means that they are influenced by one another. Another example would be American study that linked higher consumption of soybeans lead to higher risk of breast cancer (while failing to consider that Japanese women consumed more soy beans but had significantly lower amount of breast cancer case)
