[Informatics] SAT Hypothesis: spurious correlations

[Mark]

Hi, pattern-finders

While teaching your angel-faced cherubs about hypotheses, and the fact that
correlation does not mean causality (at least I hope you're going to teach
them that) you might want to aim them at
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations.

This site has many (55,837 to be precise) amusing and salutary (American)
examples of the danger of carelessly attributing causation without evidence
such as:

- the number of people drowned by falling into a pool correlates with the
number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in.  (Actually, this one makes sense
to me)

- per capita cheese consumption correlates with the number of people dying
by becoming entangled in their bedsheets. (I didn't know that was even
possible)

- the divorce rate in Maine correlates with per capita consumption of
margarine.

- the age of 'Miss America' correlates with the number of murders by steam,
hot vapours and hot objects.

As a bonus there are some nice graphs and correlation statistics that may
be a nice stepping-off point for discussion of statistical principles like
averages, standard deviations, and significance that kids might need when
manipulating their complex datasets.

Enjoy

Mark

-- 

Mark Kelly

mark at vceit.com
http://vceit.com
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