The Goon Line 010: Spurious Correlations

I live with a scientist who won our university’s logic award when we graduated. For some totally illogical reason, that person entered a lifetime partnership with an individual who has never once used “evidence” or “rational thought” when making a decision, preferring instead to go on “gut feelings” and ~*~*~vibes~*~*~. (And often, even worse, “because it will be a good goof.”)

That’s why this goof tickles me so much — it lives right in that tiny sliver of Venn diagram that appeals to the way both my spouse and I think. Take a look at Spurious Correlations from Tyler Vigen. It is a website that uses artificial intelligence to match trends whose data points, or whatever they are called, align. They never make any sense, but if you told me any of these were real, because of the way they are presented and because I’m not that smart, I would completely believe you. They are also really funny.

Like I said last week, I am usually a little bit afraid of AI, but this is such a clever application of it (also very dangerous, maybe?). And you can go even deeper to read the “papers” behind these graphs. Anyway, poke around the site, because there are a whole lot of these to consume. There’s probably some meditation to be done here on the integrity of scientific data and how it is presented in general, but those vibes sound boring so I’m gonna go make a grilled cheese because it feels good.