Spurious correlations

Hat-tip to Old Roommate for telling me about this website of spurious correlations.

For the non-statistical:  a correlation is a mathematical relationship between two measures, that ranges from -1.0 to 0.0 to  1.0.  The further from zero the relationship is (the correlation), the larger the mathematical relationship.  A correlation of 0.0 means that there is no discernible relationship:  any connection is totally random.  A correlation of +1.0 means that the two things are completely locked together.  And a correlation of -1.0 means that as one thing increases, the other perfectly decreases -- and vice-versa.

The human tendency is to think that  these two things might be causally related.  But it ain't necessarily so.


Two examples from the website:

and

Ayep!


--GG