ON THE WEB: SPURIOUS CORRELATIONS
by Hazed
“Correlation does not mean causation.” That means, just because two things happen at the same time or with the same frequency it doesn’t mean that one causes the other. It could be that both things are caused by a third factor – or just a coincidence.
I bang on about this whenever I report on dubious studies purporting to show something idiotic such as wearing high heels causes cancer or that living near a field of cows makes you more likely to develop asthma. Or, in a famous spoof study last year which I reported in the Star, nations with high chocolate consumption produce more Nobel prize winners.
There’s a brilliant new website that demonstrates this beautifully. Spurious Correlations finds graphs of random things and matches them up with other graphs that look the same shape, to ludicrous effect. So we get the fact that the number of people who drowned by falling into swimming pools correlates with the number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in. Or eating cheese correlates with dying by bedclothes-tangling, margarine eating correlates with divorce and honey producing bees correlate with marriage rates.
Look at the Spurious Correlations here, then remember this next time you read a report that suggests a similar strange correlation.
