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Spurious Correlations Hardcover – May 12, 2015

by Tyler Vigen (Author)

4.2 295 ratings

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"Spurious Correlations ... is the most fun you'll ever have with graphs." -- Bustle

Military intelligence analyst and Harvard Law student Tyler Vigen illustrates the golden rule that "correlation does not equal causation" through hilarious graphs inspired by his viral website.

Is there a correlation between Nic Cage films and swimming pool accidents? What about beef consumption and people getting struck by lightning? Absolutely not. But that hasn't stopped millions of people from going to tylervigen.com and asking, "Wait, what?" Vigen has designed software that scours enormous data sets to find unlikely statistical correlations. He began pulling the funniest ones for his website and has since gained millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and tons of media coverage. Subversive and clever, Spurious Correlations is geek humor at its finest, nailing our obsession with data and conspiracy theory.

Print length

208 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Hachette Books
Publication date

May 12, 2015
Dimensions

8 x 1 x 5.75 inches
ISBN-10

0316339431
ISBN-13

978-0316339438
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Ethan Johnson
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Randall Munroe
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Although it is often funny, Vigen adds that 'this book has a serious side. Graphs can lie, and not all correlations are indicative of an underlying causal connection.' We may love to contemplate the data that seem to connect sharks and tornados (who wouldn't?), but Vigen's reminder is important when we're faced with spurious correlations in the wild, played not for laughs but to mislead.―Boston Globe

The perfect little book for adding fuel to your Dad's font of...information."―Bustle

"Draws into comical and obvious relief how easily we can get trapped into seeing relationships where there are none."―Boston Globe

"Hilarious."―Washington Post

"Cheeky."―Huffington Post

"Bizarre."―The Daily Mirror

"Spurious Correlations...is the most fun you'll ever have with graphs."―Bustle

About the Author

Tyler Vigen is a student at Harvard Law School. He created the Spurious Correlations website during a week before finals, when he probably should have been studying. Prior to attending Harvard, Tyler was trained in visual intelligence collection and analysis by the military.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hachette Books; Gift edition (May 12, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316339431
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316339438
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 1 x 5.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #461,913 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #118 in History Humor (Books)
- #874 in Trivia (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.2 295 ratings

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Received damaged

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2023

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Comics for nerds

Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2015

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"Correlation is not causation." Any proper nerd absorbed this with her mother's milk. This ridicules correlation by its own rules. Flip ten coins in sequence, a few dozen times. Among those few dozen,some sequences will inevitably achieve this odd mathematical property of "correlation." In this case, it means nothing. With enough of these short, random sequences, some among them statistically must achieve this property of "significance," which very often means nothing.

That's Vigen's point. If you take 100 random data sets, do the math, and match them all against each other and look for p=0.05 significance, you'll probably have over 2000 "significant" correlations. Some might come from a common underlying variable, like a map of U.S. disposable diaper usage that looks exactly like a map of U.S. population. Many come from the fact that Bonferroni corrections aren't widely used. And all of them come from the fact that random data has random signals in it. Statistically, pareidolia becomes compulsory

So, brace yourself. You'll see samples too small to mean anything. You'll see blatant disregard for correlations due to underlying ('confounding') variables. You'll see every statistical error made, and flaunted. If you can read it that way, you'll come away with a muscle cramp labelled "wry" in your cheeks.

And you'll read some earnest comments about how the procedure is invalid from the ground up. They'll be right, and will have missed the joke, and will have missed missing it.(Google "dunning kruger.")

It's dumb. It's dumb by design. It looks for ways to be extra-dumb. Ant that's what I like about it.

-- wiredweird

50 people found this helpful

It is a one-trick pony . . . but the trick does work about half the time

Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2020

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I got this for my engineer dad, who I figured would appreciate it; he thought it was hilarious and laughed at basically every single page, bless him. I'll admit that I found the trick wearing thin about halfway through the book -- though individual correlations were still so ridiculous they made me laugh. It would be nice if some of the white space around each graph was used to perhaps explain the correlations (even in a speculative way, though perhaps I'm defeating the purpose of the book by even asking for that) or even just fun facts. It's an impressive amount of work, makes an excellent coffee-table or gift book, and is well worth the price. There isn't much reread value, but the lesson is important and the way it teaches that lesson is entertaining.

2 people found this helpful

Robert I. Hedges

Hilarious Justification Of Statistical Misappropriation

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2019

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In "Spurious Correlations" Harvard law student and former military analyst Tyler Vigen demonstrates how statistics mislead and how correlation definitely does not equal causation. In this book he's taken clearly disparate data sets and compared them to each other with hilarious results (my personal favorites are "Letters in the winning word in the Scripps National Spelling Bee vs. Deaths due to venomous spiders" on pp. 50-51 and "Bruce Willis film appearances vs. People killed by an exploding boiler" on pp. 160-161).

This is a great book, and while funny does have serious implications regarding manipulation by anyone with an agenda (particularly those in advertising, politics, or media). It's a quick but thoroughly enjoyable read.

12 people found this helpful

Amusing one-trick pony

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2015

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This is a lightweight, coffee table book as the review by Randy Olson says. You can read it, because it's mostly pictures, in less than half an hour if you want. It's sort of a one-trick pony, dozens of different, humorously absurd examples of two graphs showing a high degree of correlation between two nonsensically paired topics, like cheese consumption per year and deaths from choking in bed per year. There is a token amount of text slotted under the graphs, that occasionally is itself humorous, but never substantive. The author has just one, albeit important, message and it's driven home over and over again: past correlations don't prove anything. A message most journalists should have tattooed on the back of their hands, given how often they mis-report statistical analyses.

10 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Interesting and quick read

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2021

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Interesting and quick read. But u may need to cultural context to enjoy it. Good read and recommend for leisure read.

A very interesting and funny book. A great waiting room book

Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2015

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A very interesting and funny book. A great waiting room book, and also a (serious?) look at misuse of statistics. One shortcoming is that they were all time series charts (chronological by year), and it gets a bit monotonous after a while. Some of the variables had a "who cares?" quality to them. It would be interesting to see correlations across states, nations, age groups, daytime temperature, etc., and/or statistics other than correlation coefficient; if the next edition improves on these, I would buy it.

One person found this helpful

If you understand what correlation between two indicators means, ...

Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2016

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If you understand what correlation between two indicators means, this book will have you laughing. The author's entire point is that correlation does not equal causality. This means that statistics cannot be used mechanically. Just because two things happen to correlate well, in the absence of other, confirming information, you can draw no conclusion. As I paged through this book, I kept laughing at the absurdity of some of the charts. My hat's off to the author - he made his point very well.

2 people found this helpful

Christopher Avila

Helps understand correlation vs causality

Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2018

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Funny and easy to read, some of the correlations make you think on causality :) ... Good to show students difference between correlation and causality.

Recommend this for sales professionals

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2017

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Fascinating study of bizarre correlations. It can get a bit in-depth if your not a mathematician, which I am not. But overall it really helped me view study results with more educated skepticism. A must read for anyone who relies on "%" type results to sell their product or service. This book will assist you in over-coming objections if you understand how a competitor is "twisting" a number or correlation.

4 people found this helpful

Factually Inaccurate

Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2016

Verified Purchase

According to this book, total U.S. alcohol sales in 2009 were somewhere around $57 trillion, which is impossible considering the entire U.S. GDP in 2009 was $14.5 trillion. The book made this error on two separate correlations. One was Alcohol Sold in Grocery Stores (reported as $22 trillion in 2009) vs Total Number of Bridges in the United States. The other was Alcohol Sold in Liquor Stores (reported as $35.3 trillion in 2009) vs Money Spent on Pets. It went on to say,

"... that "T" in alcohol spending is for "trillion." In 2009, Americans spent ten times the value of the national debt on alcohol."

First off, we didn't spend anywhere near $35.3 trillion on alcohol (it's really more like $200 billion/year). Second, the U.S. national debt in 2009 was just shy of $12 trillion. So, not only were his numbers on alcohol wrong, but he can't even divide correctly.

It really kills the credibility of this book's correlations when obvious errors were made on two separate occasions.

14 people found this helpful

Correlation does not imply causation

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2018

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A cute, entertaining exercise in data mining.
Bottom line: Correlation does not imply causation.
A perfect gift for a nerdy statistician

I would like to see a bit more discussion with each comparison

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2015

Verified Purchase

Quick read. I would like to see a bit more discussion with each comparison, but this book is full of some great data that you could use to add some levity to any presentation or statistics course.

One person found this helpful

Interesting read

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2016

Verified Purchase

Skimmed thru this quickly. A collection of examples "Spurious Correlations", each explained in a page or two. After reading a few, you get the point and can jump to the ones you find most entertaining. Good source of comebacks next time someone tries to connect cause and effect to two things that may not be.

2 people found this helpful

The peril of having only one idea.

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2019

Verified Purchase

It is exactly what it appears- it illustrates one interesting point, using a clever gimmick, and then repeats the process on every page.

5 people found this helpful

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