Correlation and causation

Spurious correlations, by the bucketful

Marc Abrahams in Improbable Research

Tyler Vigen’s “Spurious Correlations” web site presents many spurious correlations.

Correlation does not imply causation, or so they say. What causes people to say that? You might ask that question of Tyler Vigen, who is a student at Harvard Law School and a former store detective (at Macy’s) and also formerly a military geospacial intelligence analyst.

Or you might ask Wikipedia. Or ask XKCD. Correlation does, by the way, imply correlation.

Here’s one of Tyler Vigen’s spurious correlations:

People who drowned after falling out of a fishing boat correlates with Marriage rate in Kentucky

Here’s another:

Industrial manufacturing doctorates awarded (US) correlates with Per capita consumption of mozzarella cheese (US)

 

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