Vincent Gable’s Blog

November 9, 2009

Spurious

What’s a spurious relationship?

Here’s one: People who eat ice cream are more likely to drown. Both incidence of ice cream eating and rates of drowning are related to summertime. The relationship between ice cream and drowning is spurious. That is, there is no relationship. Yet they appear related because they are both related to a third variable.

Lisa Wade

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(Image via the amazing Superdickery)

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