Association (statistics)

In statistics, an association comes from two variables that are related and is often confused with causation though association does not imply a causal relationship.For example, the United Nations studied governmental failure — when governments fall or are overthrown and found that the best indicator of a government about to fall was the  infant mortality rate. Causally, it may seem as though the dying children cause the government to fall but their mere association does not imply this.
See more at Wikipedia.org...