Causation and correlation may sound alike but are very different. The former means the root of subsequent events, while the latter refers to an actual or apparent relationship between trends in which ...

Data purists would rap my knuckles for asking this question and reply, "Never". On the other hand, "data sophists" who're accustomed to lying with Big Data in even more crude ways would wonder, “Duh, ...

A comment posted by a reader on a recent post reprimanded me for suggesting that marijuana caused relationships to go bad. In this instance the reader was mistaken, as I had specifically used the word ...

Paul Kaplan: Quoting Benjamin Disraeli, Mark Twain famously quipped, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." In the field of investments, in which we rely heavily on ...

After reading Dalton Conley’s piece on recent developments in social-science research (“The Data in Your Lap: How to Interpret Naturally Occurring Experiments,” The Review, December 19), I can only ...

There are a lot of SEO studies out there, but not all of them are made equal. Here's how to decide if X is really affected by Y, or merely a coincidence. Every so often the SEO community will erupt ...

One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten. – T. Sowell Correlations are often mistaken for ...

Correlation doesn't imply causation. You've probably heard that before. It's a true statement that's important in statistical analysis—if more tall people own cats, that doesn't mean that cats cause ...

Looks like the show Sport Science (on ESPN) might take the place of Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman as the target of my bad-science attacks. Note: it looks like ESPN has the short episode I will be attacking ...

A comment posted by a reader on a recent post reprimanded me for suggesting that marijuana caused relationships to go bad. In this instance the reader was mistaken, as I had specifically used the word ...