"This is the oldest, yet often useless, criticism in the world."
And criticizing people for pointing out that correlation does not imply causation is the newest, yet often useless, criticism in the world.
Read the context of my statement again. The comment to which I was replying called it "a verifiably sound strategy". Sounds a little strong when the only presented evidence does not control for factors like parents' income (or f0, ... fi as you call them).
Maybe some such evidence does control for those factors, but the evidence presented did not.
So to conclude, "This chart only shows correlation" is a useless comment to make unless accompanied by an analysis of the possible probabilistic models that the evidence supports.
And criticizing people for pointing out that correlation does not imply causation is the newest, yet often useless, criticism in the world.
Read the context of my statement again. The comment to which I was replying called it "a verifiably sound strategy". Sounds a little strong when the only presented evidence does not control for factors like parents' income (or f0, ... fi as you call them).
Maybe some such evidence does control for those factors, but the evidence presented did not.