What lurking variables might be causing the increase in one or both of the variables? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

Hi! This answer will be dependent on the situation/variables at hand.

I can try to give you an example:

Let's say you are looking at 2 variables-- air conditioning bills and ice cream sales. Looking at these variables, you may very well see a correlation between the two, however neither one of these would make sense to cause the other.

A major lurking variable in this scenario is the outside Temperature, or weather. Both of these variables are highly correlated with the outside temperature--as temperature rises, so both AC bills and ice cream sales.

Hope that helps!