Not only classic, but documented(!) See George E. P. Box ;Hunter, William G., and Hunter, J. Stuart, Statistics for Experimenters, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1978 ,ISBN 0-471-09315-7 Storks bring babies: pg. 8
They reference the original data, and Lars Pallesen, who dug it out. Jay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Classic study: Correlation between local stork population and local births. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Stu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 1:08 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: When does correlation imply causation? > > > My favorite original example is the correlation between number of > > annual murders in a city and number of books in its libraries. > > Students have no trouble seeing that the two are going to have a > > fairly high correlation coefficient(*), but murders don't make > > people read and books don't make people kill. > > There are many such examples. My favorites involve time series, for example, > hat size and shoe size (birth to adult); hair length and weight (birth to > age > 1); and those with a third factor, for example, temperature and electric > bill. > > Stu > Garfield High School > Los Angeles > > ================================================================= > Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about > the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at > http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ > ================================================================= > > ================================================================= > Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about > the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at > http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ > ================================================================= -- Jay Warner Principal Scientist Warner Consulting, Inc. 4444 North Green Bay Road Racine, WI 53404-1216 USA Ph: (262) 634-9100 FAX: (262) 681-1133 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.a2q.com The A2Q Method (tm) -- What do you want to improve today? ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
