When two numbers move together, it is tempting to think that one is the cause of the other. However, data can only confirm ...

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 ...

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: ...

Most of us have heard the phrase "correlation does not equal causation." But understanding how scientists move beyond identifying correlations to establish causation remains a mystery to many. Finding ...

The body fat percentage of people who go to the gym every day is indeed low. But wait a moment. Is that "lowness" really the ...

Stock prices went into overdrive commensurate with the Fed's latest liquidity injections. We are seeing technical conditions we haven't seen since the 1990s. Fundamental and economic developments do ...

There’s an old saying that goes, “figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” But sometimes even the figures can spin a confusing story. That’s why I’ve always appreciated the power of understanding ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

News headlines often compress complex science into a simple storyline: If two things are happening at the same time, one must be causing the other. Tylenol causes autism. Ultra-processed foods cause ...