Making causal relationships that just aren't there
June 28, 2011 Leave a comment
Reading through some of the pointless Early Day Motions (sad but true) I came across part of a sentence which whilst the subject was deadly serious, made me have a wry smile. In politics people like to use statistics to prove there point. Then you get some people who say that because one thing happens when another does the two must be linked. You know… like if Chelsea win when Lampard plays and there was a full moon the week before, that this is law as we have seen this happen more than once, and you cannot dispute this as fact.
Today in EDM 1980 it reads that…. “a total of 223 people died in fires where a smoke alarm was present and 130 people lost their lives in fires where a smoke was absent in 2008, the latest year for which there a re figures”….
So from this we can all conclude that we should sleep much easier in our beds and take those smoke alarms off.. after all, that’s what the statistics show… we are just safer without the. OR actually that is complete nonsense, just like some of the other causal relationships people come up with.