Did you know that if your name is Jordan and you live in South Carolina that you are likely to be a robber or to commit a robbery in the future? It’s all true! If you don’t believe me, check out The Journal of Sociolinguistic Criminology:

I love how “statistical robustness” demands attention! Obviously it’s all jive. The fellow behind it is named Tyler Vigen and he has a website called Spurious Scholar devoted to this nonsense. There’s also a part called Spurious Correlations which has stuff like this:

Back in the ancient past when I was a science teacher I used to have Mr. O’Connor’s Three Laws of Science. I figured that if Newton had his Three Laws of Motion then I could have my three things, too. Anyway, Law #1 was all measurements are uncertain. Law #2 was correlation does not necessarily imply causality. And Law #3 was science is a description of nature and not an explanation.

I thought they were equally important. But I’ve found over the years that #2 is the most routinely violated. People love correlations! Who needs causal mechanisms when all you need is happenstance?

This Tyler Vigen chap is having fun with computer tools. He uses databases and a large language model. He “dredges” the data for correlations, and as he has tons of data, he gets lots of correlations. Then he has the LLM (a type of AI) write the paper. Hilarious! It all looks and sounds real until you actually read the stuff. Vigen does all the math, the statistical analysis, which gives the illusion of heft. It’s a spoof on researchers who rely too much on mathematical models and not enough on common sense. Note that the names of the researchers on the bogus papers spell out CHAT GPT with their first initials.

I’m reminded of a funny bit from another sorta-famous internet nerd (Randall Munroe of xkcd):

OK, I know it’s geek humor! But geeks like to laugh on Christmas Eve, too. Anyway, the comic is spot-on about the sports media landscape. Since it’s the holi-daze, you will be subjected to too much sports. Keep that mute button close by.

Happy Christmas and Merry Everything to all!