

The Economist Fails at Statistics. - pitdesi
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/obesity-and-driving?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fwl%2Fdc%2Froadhogs
This is why the Economist is not the Statistician.
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zwieback
Agree, it's not a very good article but if you're a regular Economist reader
you know that they frequently put out charts like this exactly to highlight
interesting but potentially misleading correlations.

Click on the "Daily Chart" link in the header to see more examples.

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pitdesi
The Economist fails at Stats. Quite embarassing, really. You can draw a link
between any 2 increasing variables if you'd like, or between an increasing one
and a decreasing one.

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scottkduncan
It's not much of an article, but it's also not really a stats fail. They show
an example of strong correlation, warn the reader that correlation doesn't
equal causation, explain that they didn't control for several other variables
that might be correlated with their result, and also mention that they didn't
explore reverse causality. As the title says, they're highlighting a "striking
relationship" and don't claim to be proving a fact.

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sukuriant
So they said wrote a linkbait article to improve their site's view rate, and
then, in the article said: "this and this are going up, but we can't relate
any of it. Everything we've just told you is potentially crap and it's purely
coincedence. We didn't check anything, but ... Eee!! numbers that indict
driving and obesity!"

That's terrible, sensationalist journalism.

News at 11: icecream sales strongly linked to forest fires in summer.

