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Posted on 3rd July 2014 |
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This BBC story should be required reading for everyone, but most especially for all journalists and bloggers. It describes the risks of implying cause and effect relationships between statistical phenomena just because there is a correlation between the data. It refers to a web-site which gives a host of examples of spurious statistical correlations. One of my favourites is "Number people who drowned by falling into a swimming-pool correlates with number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in". Not only are the examples very entertaining, but it reminds us that statistical justifications and explanations should always be taken with a large pinch of salt. | |