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Spurious Correlation Essaydeals1.promo/spurious-correlation-essay

In this business assignment, we have shed light on How Spurious correlation works.

Spurious correlation is a mathematical relationship in which two or more variables or

events seem to be causally related but they are not actually related. They show a

relationship either due to wrong inference or coincidence. Spurious correlation may also

be observed because of existence of a third, unseen variable. I have seen various spurious

correlations on website (http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations) and some of them

are very interesting and funny. For example, the relationship between “US spending on

science, space, and technology” and “suicide by hanging, strangulation, and suffocation”

(Vigen, 2015). Following are the variables:

Variable 1: US spending on science, space, and technology

Variable 2: Suicide by hanging, strangulation, and suffocation

It is not possible to determine any relationship between these two variables on logical

grounds. The relationship between these two variables is because of coincidence. The

statistical data suggests that the US spending on science, space, and technology has

increased over the period of time. Similar is the case with suicide by hanging,

strangulation, and suffocation. The value of correlation coefficient in this case is 99.79%

which means that the relationship between the two variable is very strong (Simon, 1977).

However, there is no means by which one can infer an increase in number of suicides by

hanging, strangulation, and suffocation due to an increase in spending on science, space,

and technology. This relationship must be a spurious relationship which is observed only

because of coincidence otherwise it is not possible to draw any logical inference. There is

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no indication of existence of any third variable. It means that the relationship is observed

only because of coincidence. It is a spurious correlation which does not actually exist

(Haig, 2003).

Another spurious correlation which I studied on this website was the relationship between

the number of people who drowned by falling into a pool and films Nicholas Cage

appeared in. It is a very funny correlation which shows that the number of people who

drowned by falling into a pool increased as the number of Nicholas Cage’s appearing in

the films increased. It is easy to infer that there is no logical relationship between

Nicholas Cage’s appearing and number of people who drowned in the swimming pools

(Chang, 2003). The value of correlation coefficient is 66.7% which shows that the

relationship between the variables is quite strong. Regardless of the fact that the number

of people who drown whenever Nicholas Cage appears in the movie, one cannot restrict

Nicholas Cage from appearing in the movie because Nicholas Cage has nothing to do with

people who want to swim. The relationship between these two variables is spurious. The

statisticians observed this relationship only because of coincidence. It is not possible to

draw a logical relationship between these two variables (Calude, 2017).

In both of these examples, it is not possible to infer the causal relationship between the

variables on logical grounds and there is no indication of any third variable. It means that

the relationship between these two variables was observed only because of coincidence

and the relationship does not actually exist.

References

Calude, C. S. (2017). The deluge of spurious correlations in big data. Foundations of

science, 22(3), 595-612.

Chang, N. K. (2003). Learning spurious correlations instead of deeper relations. In

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 25, No. 25).

Haig, B. D. (2003). What is a spurious correlation?. Understanding Statistics: : Statistical

Issues in Psychology. Education, and the Social Sciences, 2(2), 125-132.

Simon, H. A. (1977). Models of Discovery: and Other Topics in the Methods of Science.

Springer Science & Business Media.

Vigen, T. (2015). Spurious Correlations. Hachette Books.

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