CFC Blog #130: Avoiding Spurious Correlations

I love how Lauren is able to so naturally tie humor into her writing yet still make really thought-provoking and solid points :) Her blog reminds me of something that happened just this week when I walked into a coffee shop - the barista complimented my shirt, and afterwards I thought that maybe she was just giving me that compliment because I was having a bad day and she must've thought I looked upset or something. It's funny how sometimes I so easily tie a cause to tiny events, or even ASK what the cause of something is. When sometimes things just are what they are... and sometimes it's better to see things more objectively and not overthink it :) Thank you Lauren - your post caused () me to come to some realizations about how I personally operate in my own world each day. 

- Amanda 

Avoiding Spurious Correlations

It’s a saying most people have probably heard - “correlation does not equal causation.” Just because two things are associated with one another does not imply that one necessarily causes the other. For example, it is well known that how healthy a country is and its GDP are highly correlated - it’s much harder to prove if one necessarily drives the other.

Even more, just because two things may appear to be correlated does not necessarily mean that they are related. If two events follow the same trend over time, we are often taking major leaps of faith when assuming they are some how connected. I always get a good laugh looking at the website “Spurious Correlations” - my personal favorite is the correlation between “Number of people who drowned by falling into a pool” and “Films Nicolas Cage appeared in” between the years of 1999 and and 2006.

Obviously, it is outrageous to make the claim that those two events are somehow linked to one another despite very high correlation (come on, his movies aren’t THAT bad…). Still, as I was getting a good chuckle out of these the other day, I couldn’t help but wonder how many “spurious correlations” I was making in my own life.

Too often, some event happens in my life - a friend cancels plans last minute, I get an email from a work colleague that is a little more gruff than usual, a peer suddenly becomes more antagonistic when debating a political issue - and I immediately attribute it to something I did or, even worse, a personal insecurity related more to my personality. Sometimes, there may be a link. But more often than not, especially when we have some kind of relationship with a person, such events are independent of who we perceive ourselves to be and things we have done.

So much freedom could be found in focusing on that independence rather than jumping to conclusions and immediately blaming ourselves. We can ask “what is wrong” and approach problem solving with more objectivity and rationality. Collaboration and open conversation become more achievable. We gain the clarity to hopefully see that despite having an almost identical trend line, the consumption of mozzarella cheese and the number people getting their PhDs in civil engineering are not actually related.