On: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Ho...

[fooker]

I once attended a lecture by a well known statistics professor, who demonstrated a similar correlation between the price of a kg of apples and the rate of divorce in his country.

[coandco → fooker]

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations seems relevant here.

[tonyedgecombe → fooker]

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

[DoreenMichele → fooker]

"An apple a day keeps the divorce lawyer away."

[paulddraper → fooker]

Are apples and divorces plausibly related?

Or was the professor simply drawing from an enormous number of metrics to find a spurious relationship (and report just that).

[ajmurmann → paulddraper]

That snake was trying to tell us something!

[gsich → ajmurmann]

An apple is not mentioned there ;)

[im3w1l → paulddraper]

Well price of apples should approximately reflect general food affordability.

[paulddraper → im3w1l]

Hm...so economic hardship causes high apple prices and high divorce rates.

[timr → fooker]

Thank you. It's depressing how nobody here is observing the obvious, uncontrolled co-variate in this "analysis": per-capita income:

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/december/link...

Correlation vs cause is no problem for HN if the correlation in question confirms a bias!