Do The Koch Bros Cause People to Fall Out of Wheelchairs?

No, of course not, but Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela drives corn syrup consumption (and therefore obesity) in the United States.  Unquestionably.

Everyone is–or should be–familiar with two things: that the rise in global temperature tracks the rise on CO2 levels, and that correlation is not causation.  At least you know that latter fact if you’ve ever studied basic statistics.

Comes now a wonderful new website, Spurious Correlations, that shows a wide variety of graphed correlations that are obviously ridiculous, starting with this one showing how campaign contributions can be made to track the number of people falling out of wheelchairs:

Wheelchairs copy

And here’s the “proof” that Venezuela drives corn syrup consumption in the US:

VZ Oil Imports copy

There are many more good ones like these, including the number of people who drowned in a swimming pool vs. the number of films starring Nicholas Cage (though I’d rather the see the Nick Cage-moviegoer suicide rate), and cheese consumption vs. people strangled by their bedsheets.  Some of these correlations even look like hockey sticks.  (Heh.)

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