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, ...

The rooster thinks he summons the sun because the sunrise always follows his crow. Correlation, at its worst, is a very confident rooster. For decades, our data economy has run on the same illusion: ...

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 ...

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 ...

IN THE mid-1990s, an algorithm trained on hospital admission data made a surprising prediction. It said that people who presented with pneumonia were more likely to survive if they also had asthma.

Russell has a PhD in the history of medicine, violence, and colonialism. His research has explored topics including ethics, science governance, and medical involvement in violent contexts. Russell has ...

"Synthetic chemical in consumer products linked to early death, study finds.” “People with the highest levels of phthalates had a greater risk of death from any cause, especially cardiovascular ...

Most studies include multiple response variables, and the dependencies among them are often of great interest. For example, we may wish to know whether the levels of mRNA and the matching protein vary ...