Leave this here: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Wow, I nearly ignored your link - glad I didn't!
I think some of the expandable GenAI "made-up explanations" and "images" on that page are the icing on the cake.
I knew a guy who did that one time. Know what happened? He's DEAD.
His name was Jimi Hendrix!
I've never confused correlation with causation and I'm not dead. I think I know why
Brilliant!
Me: 'It sure looks like rising CO2 levels are bringing climate change."
Them: "coRreLaTIOn dOes Not MEan cAusaTIon!"
water cures covid
you almost had me dying for this one
I mean, yes. But also...
That's the joke....
I absolutely got whooshed there.
Ohhh. It was a joke?
Alternatively:
The way he holds that laptop in the second panel horrifies me.
He holds the laptop like that on purpose, to make you cringe.
Maybe the causation is the other way around. People are only willing to attend a statistics class once they are on the way (but not fully aware yet) to understand that correlation doesn't imply causation.
Looks like an AI generated image to me. Lots of strange artifacts an artist wouldn’t create. And there’s something uncanny about the stippling pattern I’ve seen before in AI images.
The top right one is definitely not drawn by a human, it's right out hexagons. Noone cross-hatches like that because you can't cross-hatch like that there's no lines going straight through.
The rest could be artistic choice, compression artifacts, or other stuff though. Well, some minor stuff, the topmost book on the left pile on the desk on the right is sus, and there's way too many sponges at the base of the chalkboard. But none of them are dead tells like the hexagons.
Idk about that, I used to sometimes work for a group that translates manga and have seen similar patterns to that
It does somewhat resemble the halftone dithering patterns that commonly occur in manga, but this is supposed to be cross-hatched otherwise the fringes wouldn't be lines.
This looks shopped — I can tell from some of the pixels, and from seeing quite a few shops in my time.
I was thinking so as well. Mostly because of the left pupil not looking like the right pupil, but also the style. The style of shadow below the chalkboard looks like a really odd choice.
How did you spot that? I'm good at spotting real life images but I didn't even blink at this one. I saw one thing when I went back after reading your comment, but it took me a minute to find it
I work a lot with AI images, you just get a sense for it over time. It is getting harder over the years as things improve however.
I doubted your assertion at first; I've experimented with all kinda techniques for stippling and pointillism (sp?), but after the other guys comment I zoomed in and quickly realized the techniques are mix and match. Hatching morphing into scales, for instance.
Good eye.
For me it's the elbow wrinkles on his one arm, they make no sense.
Site from the watermark:
Yeah, somehow it looked AI before I clicked into it for the high res version, something about the way the guy's face was drawn. And when I saw the high res, it was really obvious, because the pupils are askew in a way a true artist would not have chosen. And as you say, the stippling pattern is typical of AI. Weird that our brains seem to be some of the best competitors in the arms race between creating and identifying AI images.
Hmm, maybe. I honestly can't tell.
It’s certainly better than most! For instance the text looks excellent. Look at the scientist’s eyes for a clue - one of them has a suspicious white circle while the other doesn’t, and the asymmetry does not seem to be intentional.
I like the meme, but I don't think it actually works. The implication here is that there's a correlation between confusing correlation with causation and dying. But there isn't such a correlation. You are statistically equally likely to die either way
~~THATS THE JOKE~~
I see the confusion now. It’s evident in the thread below. Carry on.
No, it's not. The joke is that there is a correlation, but that actually correlation doesn't mean causation. But here we have a situation where there is neither correlation nor causation.
The problem is that the joke suggests that correlation is when A -> B (or at least it appears as such). Implication (in formal logic) is not the same as correlation.
Sorry to get mathematical..
P(A∣B)=P(A) iff
P(B∣A)=P(B) iff
P(A∩B)=P(A)P(B)
->𝐴 and 𝐵 are uncorrelated or independent.
There is no correlation with events with probability 1
isn't that just Bayesian apologist propaganda?
*jumps in an unlabelled Frequentist van* "Floor it!"
Don't even need to bring probability into this. Death is certain, and correlation requires variance.
Yup.
If the rate of dying is 100% for all humans.
Then the rate of dying for both humans who confuse correlation and causation and those who don’t is 100%. Hence there is no correlation between the confusion and dying. So no one is confusing correlation or causation, because neither are present.
This is why you never check the comments on a joke you initially thought was funny.
You are statistically equally likely to die either way
That just adds an additional layer to the joke without undermining the intended punchline about people confusing the two.