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Facebook's "Highlight" Feature Lets You Pay To Send Messages To Friends - Business Insider
TED and inequality: The real story - TEDChris: The untweetable
The Facebook Offering: How It Compares - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com
Your startup?s top 3 priorities. | ex post facto
Pretty Lights - You Get High NYE 2011 Denver Video Recap - YouTube
Going East For Money, Pinterest Refuses To 'Bow At The Alter Of Amazon Or Google' - Business Insider
Where The Wild Avengers Are
05/17/12, 35
TED and inequality: The real story - TEDChris: The untweetable
05/17/12, 05
The Facebook Offering: How It Compares - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com
05/17/12, 44
Your startup?s top 3 priorities. | ex post facto
05/17/12, 40
Pretty Lights - You Get High NYE 2011 Denver Video Recap - YouTube
05/17/12, 11
Going East For Money, Pinterest Refuses To 'Bow At The Alter Of Amazon Or Google' - Business Insider
05/17/12, 19
Where The Wild Avengers Are
05/17/12, 51
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Wednesday, October 19. 2005
The Star Wars Kid
Saturday, October 1. 2005
Correlation Does Not Equal Causality
I saw this article posted on a fairly secular community blog entitled, "Societies worse off when they have God on their side." The study basically compares a fairly religious nation (America) with a fairly secular nation (Britain).
To sum up the article, they found:
I started reading the comments attached to the story anticipating a free-for-all attack against people of faith. I found quite the opposite. A lot of people called shenanigans on the article. Many people pointed out that a correlation does not equal causality. They explained that you can correlate things to technically prove anything if that were the case.
The funniest illustration of this was this graph that someone posted:
Based on the graph, we can definitively blame the lack of pirates for global warming.
More seriously though, there are a lot of factors other than religion that can explain these differences between America and Britain though. For one, I bet homicide rates are a lot lower in Britain compared to America since Britain has GUN LAWS. The make up of America and Britain are also very different, whether it be race relations, poverty rates, economic class divisions, social programs, etc.
In either case, I love the chart. Pirates, y'arr! It's almost as funny as the Chewbacca Defense.
To sum up the article, they found:
"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies."
I started reading the comments attached to the story anticipating a free-for-all attack against people of faith. I found quite the opposite. A lot of people called shenanigans on the article. Many people pointed out that a correlation does not equal causality. They explained that you can correlate things to technically prove anything if that were the case.
The funniest illustration of this was this graph that someone posted:
Based on the graph, we can definitively blame the lack of pirates for global warming.
More seriously though, there are a lot of factors other than religion that can explain these differences between America and Britain though. For one, I bet homicide rates are a lot lower in Britain compared to America since Britain has GUN LAWS. The make up of America and Britain are also very different, whether it be race relations, poverty rates, economic class divisions, social programs, etc.
In either case, I love the chart. Pirates, y'arr! It's almost as funny as the Chewbacca Defense.
--Unknown