迴歸分析
Regression analysis controls for other relevant variables by including them as regressors (explanatory variables). This helps to avoid false inferences of causality due to the presence of a third, underlying, variable that influences both the potentially causative variable and the potentially caused variable: its effect on the potentially caused variable is captured by directly including it in the regression, so that effect will not be picked up as an indirect effect through the potentially causative variable of interest. Given the above procedures, coincidental (as opposed to causal) correlation can be probabilistically rejected if data samples are large and if regression results pass cross-validation tests showing that the correlations hold even for data that were not used in the regression. Asserting with certitude that a common-cause is absent and the regression represents the true causal structure is "in principle" impossible.