Photo: Hemera
How do people who love salty snacks like their toilet paper to hang? Are fans of carbonated beverage more likely to enjoy horror movies? A new website, www.correlated.org, has the answer to such pressing questions. Founded by Shaun Gallagher, the brains behind last year’s UnofficialCensus.org, it aims to uncover one surprising correlation a day. The site asks visitors a new question every day and “[a]t the end of the day, the results of the survey are compared with the results of all previous surveys, and the two outcomes with the strongest link are highlighted.” Please remember: correlation does not equal causation. Still, we predict this site will launch a thousand graduate theses.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I like the fact that high cancer rates correlate with high milk-drinking rates. (Because people who drink milk live longer lives and cancer is much more common in old people.)
But I think you would be doing the world a great service to craft some catchy phrase that would explain this logical golden rule to the “information challenged electorate”. “Correlation is not causation” is a great phrase for the college educated, but howsabout something for the Bush-Palin voters?
Went to correlated.org yesterday and today. The latest polls have hundreds of more people answering than the previous one. Freakonomics might have just tripled their traffic.
Obviously everyone has picked up on response bias and sample sizes, but I think the biggest issue is that with so many polls to possibly inter-correlate (or associate if you will), we should expect some strong-looking correlations to show up randomly.
Today’s xkcd illustrates the problem perfectly: http://xkcd.com/882/