A ← B → C. This kind of junction is called a “fork,” and B is often called a common cause or confounder of A and C. A confounder will make A and C statistically correlated even though there is no direct causal link between them. A good example (due to David Freedman) is Shoe Size ← Age of Child → Reading Ability. Children with larger shoes tend to read at a higher level. But the relationship is not one of cause and effect. Giving a child larger shoes won’t make him read better! Instead, both variables are explained by a third, which is the child’s age. Older children have larger shoes, and
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