When two or more system variables appear to strongly correlate, is there also a cause and effect relationship? This question has daily as well as engineering applications. With the COVID pandemic raging and the National Election season running in high gear, we are inundated with a flood of data about politics, social systems, financial data, scientific data, health systems, and left to sort through it all--usually on our own.
Which variables drive and which variables are driven? Which variables both exhibit the same behavior and look related but are co-incidentally both directly related to the same, other influencing factor. Cause and effect can be extremely difficult to pin down without the benefit of some scientific way to deal with and explain all this data.
