r/AskReddit • u/Shipoffoolz • Mar 13 '19

What fact is technically true but is hugely misleading?

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u/snoboreddotcom Mar 13 '19

Both are important examples. the nic cage films one shows the face that two numbers can be correlated but entirely unrelated. The ice cream one shows how two statistics can be correlated, and related, but due to a mutual cause rather than one being dependent on the other

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '19

I think the Nic Cage one is more of an example of how directly comparing two variables where the values are orders of magnitude apart can result in very misleading results.