Dancing with Fire and Correlation! Red Adair is coming back from Indonesia. He's been over there awhile putting out fires, and he stops off in Las Vegas. On his way back to Houston, he sits down at the bar next to a guy and he starts up a conversation, and the guy starts talking about what a terrific town Las Vegas is. He says, "Not only is there gambling and good golf and all this stuff, but the entertainment here is just spectacular. Two nights ago I saw the greatest song-and-dance man ever: Lenny Davis Jr., and the guy was terrific. He's very old at this point, but, boy, he can still hoof." And Red Adair looks at the guy and says, "Lenny Davis Jr.? You mean Sammy Davis Jr.?" "Sammy, Lenny, I don't know. But the guy was great. I tell you the entertainment here is terrific." And he says, "And last night. You know who I went to see? I saw the best country and western singer I've seen in my life. This gal was just terrific. Sings like an angel. Molly Parton." And Red Adair looks at the guy. "Molly Parton? Everybody knows that it's Dolly Parton. How can you call Dolly Parton Molly Parton?" So their talk goes a little further and the guy says, "By the way, you look familiar to me. Who are you?"And he says, "Oh, I'm Red Adair."And he says, "Oh, are you still sleeping around with Ginger Rogers?"
Lest someone get the wrong impression that I distrust all statistical studies, an introductory course I took in statistics had this paperback as required reading. It was a funny book filled with cartoons, and pointed out some things to keep in mind when reading the results of statistical studies. A little outdated now. I never forgot some of the stuff in there. One chapter had to do with spurious correlation (Post Hoc Rides Again). Table of Contents
It’s nice to see this thread here. This (assigning causality to correlations) is one of several pet peeves I have. It is far too common. Observation of a correlation and we’re off to the races.
Sadly, too many people are desperately seeking to have their biases confirmed. I imagine that we're all infected with a little of the Confirmation Bias bug...but some of us are aware of it and manage it, while others continue to grasp at straws (for as long as we're permitted to have straws.)
Reading down the list of new posts and noting that everything isn’t necessarily in alphabetical order, I find it interesting that “Procrastination/getting things done” is directly followed by “ Sluggish Bowels”. There simply has to be some sort of correlation we can draw from that.