DailyDirt: Correlation Is Not Causation

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Big data is a term that's been getting some buzz as the next thing that's going to change everyone's lives (for better or worse, depending on how you look at it). Having a lot of data doesn't necessarily mean you also have a lot of useful knowledge. Garbage in, garbage out, so they say. And making correlations is easy compared to finding a direct causal relationship. However, that hasn't stopped (so-called) journalists from writing misleading headlines. If you hate correlations being mistaken for causation, submit examples you've seen in the comments below. Here are just a few to start off.

• Likes for curly fries on Facebook might correlate with high IQ scores, but don't click that like button just yet. Maybe there are more social experiments being performed on Facebook users than can be accurately counted. [url]
• Former high school athletes seem to get higher paying jobs (at least for the self-reporting men in this study). A lot of skills correlate with various forms of success. Perhaps enjoying the things you do (learned skill or not) is a reward unto itself. [url]
• Measuring the size of brain features can correlate with all kinds of activities, and people have been trying to measure brain sizes for a long time... because there are instruments that can measure the size of various brain parts. The interpretation of these measurements can lead to a lot of faulty conclusions. However, you won't often see the headline: "Watching moderate amounts of porn won’t hurt your brain." [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: big data, brain, causation, correlation, gigo, iq, journalism, pet peeves, success
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