Steve Tippins explains why drownings spike when Nicolas Cage releases movies and ice cream sales rise with murder rates. Both are driven by hidden factors like seasons, not by each other. Recognizing confounders keeps your dissertation from making false causal claims.
The number of people who have drowned by falling into a swimming pool correlates to the films that Nicolas Cage has been in. I think it would be hard to bring up causation there. Another one: ice cream sales are correlated with murder rates. Potentially, I could see ice cream sales going down and murder— if I'm not getting ice cream, I might be angry and might murder somebody. But ultimately, there's more ice cream sales in the summer, there's more murders in the summer. It's not the ice cream sales that have any causational impact on murders. However, However, we could say potentially, wow, if the murder rate goes up, many people are going to say, screw the diet, I'm going to eat if I'm going to be murdered, so I'm going to go for ice cream. But again, no real basis for any of this. Drop the word help in the comments and I'll send you the link for my free dissertation help community.
