Top all-time · #140
Tyler Vigen
Personal blog · tylervigen.comdatamath
Tyler Vigen's personal blog at tylervigen.com covers data and math. Since 2014, 282 different Hacker News readers have linked it 324 times, most often “Spurious Correlations”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Tyler Vigen's Spurious Correlations site of unrelated graphs to teach that correlation does not imply causation, which comes up in most debates about statistics.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called a favorite site, a great demonstration that correlation does not imply causation, funny, and a huge collection to read.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The personal homepage of Tyler Vigen
Most-linked posts?
- Spurious Correlations94 people · 107 mentions · first linked 2019-06-05
- 15 Insane things that correlate with each other73 people · 75 mentions · first linked 2015-05-26
- Spurious Correlations29 people · 29 mentions · first linked 2015-06-11
- Spurious correlations: correlation is not causation22 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2019-04-08
- Spurious Correlations13 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2014-05-11
- Things that correlate10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2014-05-08
- The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-08-30
- Insane Things That Correlate With Each Other4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-05-12
- /old-version.html3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-10-09
- /view_correlation?id=3593 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-09-07
What Hacker News says?
I fear this analysis would fit very well in the realm of "Spurious Correlations": https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations . At time scales like two or three years, very few economic correlations mean anything.
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “Panic at the Job Market”Submitted Spurious Correlations as a story · 41 points
HN discussion> Look at the graphs http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “Terminating Service for 8Chan”Submitted Things that correlate as a story · 23 points
HN discussionI love “causation does not imply correlation.” We still reason so much from the implicit premise that correlations are meaningful. It’s so intuitive, but wrong. The thing that finally got me to wrap my mind around it was this: https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “Conterintuitive facts in mathematics, CS, and physics”Submitted Spurious correlations as a story · 10 points
HN discussion> The only misunderstanding seems to be yours. We can clearly identify white nationalists as actual Nazis, no redefinition required. a) With no standard definition of the phrases? b) Some people may be able to, but can Facebook accurately and fairly (despite no standard accepted meaning of many terms) police speech (remember, we're not dealing with people wearing white hats at a rally, we're dealing with speech, whi…
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “Facebook to ban white nationalist content”Submitted 15 Insane things that correlate with each other as a story · 7 points
HN discussionFor more surprising correlations: http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs”Submitted Spurious Correlation as a story · 6 points
HN discussionCorrelation isn't really causation. Also have you read any of the responses posted on that reddit discussion? Here is some example of coorelation : http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations Notice that even though the graph looks very similar, one thing is not related to another.
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “Epic Games chief pays $15M to protect 7,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness”Submitted Insane Things That Correlate With Each Other as a story · 6 points
HN discussionReminds me of https://tylervigen.com/old-version.html Especially some of those graphs about stuff like childhood obesity. It would be nice if all problems in a society had a single, simple cause (bad people doing stuff!) and a single, simple solution (stop 'em!), but the world is a complex place I did notice that the people hawking bitcoin didn't include any graphs about climate change..
Comment linking /old-version.html
on “WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)”Submitted Spurious Correlations as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIt’s surprising how low that is. As a point of comparison, in 2008, 809 Americans died tangled in their bedsheets (which correlates to total revenue generated by skiing facilities: https://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1864 )
Comment linking /view_correlation?id=1864
on “Things people blamed on bicycles”Submitted Spurious Correlations as a story · 5 points
HN discussionhttps://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “Things people blamed on bicycles”Submitted Spurious correlations as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThere's also confounding variables to take into account. One of those might not be driving the other. Many commenters above are speaking about how hard it is to eject someone out of a bias, but I don't know why they're doing this. They're lamenting the inefficacy of logic to convince people while not applying it in this very case. The graph just shows a correlation. http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “What's Really Warming the World?”Submitted Spurious Correlations (aka correlation does not imply causation) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI am not negating the global warming issue here, but what I see is just a correlation of two time series, much like the correlation between "US Spending on science, space and technology" and "Suicides by hanging, strangulation or suffocation" [1] [1] http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “What's Really Warming the World?”Submitted Spurious correlations: correlation is not causation as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI don't deny man made climate change, but this argument seems to be weak. Just because two factors go up at the same time doesn't mean one caused the other. See http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations . It is necessary but not sufficient to show that greenhouse gases went up in concert with global temperatures. Not that one expects them to lay our a sweeping, thorough case for man made climate change in such…
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “What's Really Warming the World?”Submitted Spurious Correlations as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNot only is that anecdotal, but even if it's true it is correlative in the weakest sense. There are undoubtedly countless other features for which "cultures" (how does one define this concretely btw) with low Alzheimer's rates also are outliers. Here is a great demonstration of how correlation does not imply causation: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations .
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds”Submitted Spurious correlations (correlation is not causation) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionCorrelation doesn't mean cause. Otherwise you would draw conclusions like divorce rates in Maine affected by margarine consumption. https://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1703 People consuming fruit could be more healthy individuals in general, exercising and avoiding other types of food which might have more effect than consuming fruit. So be careful about drawing conclusions from correlations or epidemiologica…
Comment linking /view_correlation?id=1703
on “Melatonin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know”Submitted Spurious Correlations as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> For example, with the advent of no-fault divorce, divorces went up, but female suicide rates dropped by 20%. It wasn't all streamers and light when the 'guard rails' were on. Did the female rate decrease more in married groups than unmarried groups? Without more data, this seems like a ripe candidate for https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations Suicide rates have been dropping across the board due to a var…
Comment linking /spurious-correlations
on “No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing”Submitted Spurious Correlations as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
