Businesses that rely on correlation will be misled with increasing confidence. Businesses that master causation will navigate complexity with increasing clarity.

John Hood explores how misinterpreting data can lead to flawed conclusions about government policies and their effectiveness.

Causation and correlation may sound alike but are very different. The former means the root of subsequent events, while the latter refers to an actual or apparent relationship between trends in which ...

Data purists would rap my knuckles for asking this question and reply, "Never". On the other hand, "data sophists" who're accustomed to lying with Big Data in even more crude ways would wonder, “Duh, ...

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. The key statistical issue that needs to be addressed by the ...

Most of us have heard the phrase "correlation does not equal causation." But understanding how scientists move beyond identifying correlations to establish causation remains a mystery to many. Finding ...

[This post incorporates parts of posts from posts on my own blog and lecture notes I circulate to my graduate students. I figured it was worth revising and posting here as a) basically none of you are ...

There are a lot of SEO studies out there, but not all of them are made equal. Here's how to decide if X is really affected by Y, or merely a coincidence. Every so often the SEO community will erupt ...