News headlines often compress complex science into a simple storyline: If two things are happening at the same time, one must ...

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, ...

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 ...

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Cree Lawson, founder and CEO at Arrivalist ...

RAILWAY AGE JANUARY 2023 ISSUE: Welcome to “Timeout for Tech with Gary T. Fry, Ph.D., P.E.” Each month, we examine a technology topic that professionals in the railway industry have asked to learn ...

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 ...

One hundred fifty world leaders, with President Barack Obama as the prime mover, and hundreds of their aides and hangers-on, gathered in Paris for an event called the "2014 United Nations Climate ...

If you read a lot, like me, you might notice almost daily there’s a new study that contradicts some earlier research. Something causes cancer — then it’s good for you. You know the drill. What’s going ...

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 ...

Much of the time, people derive causation from correlation. Put another way, when two odd circumstances seem to align with one another, people assume that one causes the other. Such logic simply makes ...