The parody religion called The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster cites a correlation
between pirates and natural disasters:
“You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural
disasters are a direct result of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. As you can see,
there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperatu
Name at least 2 problems with the structure of this graph and how to correct them.
Do these problems misrepresent the data? Explain.
This graph, and the claim asserted to go with it, are presented to demonstrate the point
that, “Correlation does not necessarily imply causation.”
Explain what this means, and why it matters.
