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Correlation Quotes

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Correlation Quotes

“Most of you will have heard the maxim "correlation does not imply causation." Just because two variables have a statistical relationship with each other does not mean that one is responsible for the other. For instance, ice cream sales and forest fires are correlated because both occur more often in the summer heat. But there is no causation; you don't light a patch of the Montana brush on fire when you buy a pint of Haagan-Dazs.”

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Book:The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't
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“The investigation described in the subsequent pages bears close relation to three sciences. It was approached by the author from the standpoint of astronomy and a desire to understand the variations of the sun. It was hoped that these variations could be more accurately studied by correlation with climatic phenomena. But the science of meteorology is still comparatively new and supplies us only with a few decades of records on which to base our conclusions. So botanical aid was sought in order to extend our knowledge of weather changes over hundreds and even thousands of years by making use of the dependence of the annual rings of trees in dry climates on the annual rainfall. If the relationship sought proves to be real, the rings in the trunks of trees give us not only a means of studying climatic changes through long periods of years, but perhaps also of tracing changes in solar activity during the same time. Thus astronomy, meteorology, and botany join in a study to which each contributes essential parts and from which, it is hoped, each may gain a small measure of benefit.”

ScienceStudyClimateAstronomyWeatherEcologyCorrelationBenefitBotanyMeteorologyTree Rings
Book:Climatic cycles and tree-growth
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“Network theory confirms the view that information can take on 'a life of its own'. In the yeast network my colleagues found that 40 per cent of node pairs that are correlated via information transfer are not in fact physically connected; there is no direct chemical interaction. Conversely, about 35 per cent of node pairs transfer no information between them even though they are causally connected via a 'chemical wire' (edge). Patterns of information traversing the system may appear to be flowing down the 'wires' (along the edges of the graph) even when they are not. For some reason, 'correlation without causation' seems to be amplified in the biological case relative to random networks.”

InformationCorrelationNetworkCausationYeast
Book:The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life
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“Let us make an arbitrary decision (by a show of hands if necessary) to define the base of every stratigraphical unit in a selected section. This may be called the "Principle of the Golden Spike." Then stratigraphical nomenclature can be forgotten and we can get on with the real work of stratigraphy, which is correlation and interpretation.”

IfsMayRealShowsHandsScienceDecisionPrinciplesForgottenGoldenInterpretationUnitsSectionsArbitrarySelectedGeologyCorrelationReal WorkNomenclature
Author:D. V. Ager
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“It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer... Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other.”

IfsDoeDonePainLastsFightingEasyRealizingStruggleTearsRageInstantPairsSequenceParallelsCorrelationAgonizing
Author:Vera Nazarian
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“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.”

ThinkingMindMayEyeAbleMovingViewsJourneyFrontsConversationReflectionFlowTrainShipsLandscapePlanesInternalsNew ThoughtReluctantIntrospectiveLiableCorrelationNew PlacesQuaintMidwife
Book:The Art of Travel
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“Perhaps the deterioration of American education is illustrated by the high correlation between the number of years a person has attended school and his inability to understand the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is more likely, though, that those who interpret the Second Amendment to preclude an individual right to own guns are driven by their political agenda. Whichever the case, they do themselves no credit when they tell us that a simple, elegant sentence means the opposite of what it clearly says.”

PeopleYearsMeanPersonsSchoolPoliticalPoliticsIndividualSimpleNumbersEducationCasesArmsBearsGunOppositesCreditSentencesDrivenAgendasAmendmentsElegantInabilitySecond AmendmentCorrelationDeteriorationPolitical AgendasAmerican Education
Author:Sheldon Richman
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“Democracy entails a correlation between the public interest as expressed by a majority of the population and the governmental policies that affect them. The term encompasses various manifestations, including direct, participatory and representative democracy, but Governments must be responsive to people and not to special interests such as the military-industrial complex, financial bankers and transnational corporations. Democracy is inclusive and does not privilege an anthropological aristocracy.”

PeopleDoeGovernmentTermInterestDemocracySpecialMilitaryPolicyDirectMajorityComplexesIncludingFinancialPrivilegePopulationVariousCorporationsManifestationRepresentativesBankersAristocracySpecial InterestsCorrelationPublic InterestMilitary Industrial ComplexTransnational Corporations
Author:Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
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“A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.”

UseActionLawCausesGrowthConditionsEffectsFieldsDirectInquiryVariationCorrelationDirect Action
Book:The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species
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“But to measure cause and effect... you must ensure that a simple correlation, however tempting it may be, is not mistaken for a cause. In the 1990s the stork population of Germany increased and the German at-home birth rate rose as well. Shall we credit storks for airlifting the babies?”

WellsMayHomeCausesSimpleEffectsBabyBirthRoseRatePopulationCreditGermanyMistakenCause And EffectTemptingCorrelationPseudoscienceBirth RateStorksHome Birth
Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“The main problem, certainly, for the people who will not get vaccinated with Thimerosal, which was put into polio vaccine. And the belief was that it may cause autism. And there's been an awful lot done in terms of studies in Western Europe, Canada, the United States, and no correlation was found between Thimerosal and autism from those children who took vaccines. Indeed, when Thimerosal was taken out of many of these vaccines, the autism rate in the United States still rose.”

PeopleMayChildrenStillsStatesDoneProblemFoundBeliefCausesTermUnitedUnited StatesStudyTakenEuropeRoseWesternRateAwfulCanadaAutismVaccinesCorrelationPolioWestern EuropePolio Vaccine
Author:David Oshinsky
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“To switch lads and lassies from quickie ceremonies back to the catered works in to-be-worm-only-once white dresses, the [wedding] garment producers have turned to sociology. Through statistics as carefully laid out as a bridal train, they are establishing a correlation showing a higher divorce rate for the informally gowned.... They may just have something there.... If a bride has sunk a bunk of savings into a dress she can't use again in a second wedding, she might think twice about having a second.”

IfsThinkingMayUseMightWhiteMarriageHigherDressesTrainRateDivorceProducersSavingStatisticsSociologyWormsCeremonySavingsGarmentsBridesLadCorrelationThink TwiceBunkBridalSecond MarriageLassieDivorce Rates
Author:Malcolm Forbes
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“The prime lesson the social sciences can learn from the natural sciences is just this: that it is necessary to press on to find the positive conditions under which desired events take place, and that these can be just as scientifically investigated as can instances of negative correlation. This problem is beyond relativity.”

ProblemScienceSocialNaturalConditionsEventsLessonsNegativePressesInstancePrimeRelativitySocial ScienceNatural ScienceCorrelation
Book:An Anthropologist at Work
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“When science shall have effectually demonstrated to us the origin of matter, and proved the fallacy of the occultists and old philosophers who held (as their descendants now hold) that matter is but one of the correlations of spirit, then will the world of skeptics have a right to reject the old Wisdom, or throw the charge of obscenity in the teeth of the old religions.”

WorldMatterSpiritPhilosopherTeethRejectsSkepticFallacyDescendantsCorrelationObscenityOld Wisdom
Book:Isis Unveiled: (Two Volumes in a Slipcase)
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“You don't actually find a strong correlation between- top-line GDP growth and making money in the market. It- it seems like you should. The fastest-growing countries should give you the highest return. They simply don't. But, there's only four of us- that- that believe that story. Everyone else in the world believes that if you grow fast like China, you'll outperform in the stock market.”

IfsWorldGivingShouldBelieveCountryStoriesSeemsStrongGrowsGrowthLinesFourGrowingLike YouReturnHighestChinaMaking MoneyCorrelationGdp
Author:Jeremy Grantham
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“Religion itself cannot but be dynamic which is why "return" is an incorrect term. A return to the forms of religion which perhaps existed a couple of centuries ago is absolutely impossible. On the contrary, in order to combat modern materialistic mores, as religion must, to fight nihilism and egotism, religion must also develop, must be flexible in its forms, and it must have a correlation with the cultural forms of the epoch.”

FormOrderFightingModernCombatFlexibleEgotismNihilismMaterialisticEpochCorrelation
Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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