  In this contribution, we review some works related with the extraction of the
symmetry energy parameters from isovector nuclear excitations, like the giant
resonances. Then, we move to the general issue of how to assess whether
correlations between a parameter of the nuclear equation of state and a nuclear
observable are robust or not. To this aim, we introduce the covariance analysis
and we discuss some counter-intuitive, yet enlightening, results from it.
