[Informatics] SAT Hypothesis: spurious correlations

[Fox, Richard R]

Awesome find, Mark. Now I am wondering, who has the time to actually compare these data sets on the chance that they match? Or is there some kind of spurious connection test tool that automates the process?

Richard
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Richard Fox
Teacher of IT and Science
eLearning and Learning Technologies Coordinator
Diamond Valley College
9438 1411
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From: informatics-bounces at edulists.com.au [informatics-bounces at edulists.com.au] on behalf of Mark [mark at vceit.com]
Sent: Friday, 18 March 2016 11:28 AM
To: Year 12 VCE Informatics Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: [Informatics] SAT Hypothesis: spurious correlations

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

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Mark Kelly

mark at vceit.com<mailto:mark at vceit.com>
http://vceit.com

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