3 ms·

Reminds me of one of the prototypical sociological study examples of correlation vs causation where something akin to icecream sales correlated highly with murd

Reminds me of one of the prototypical sociological study examples of correlation vs causation where something akin to icecream sales correlated highly with murder rates. The fact air pollution, in many cases, directly correlates with population density, make the results seem less surprising. It would be more interesting if less populated areas with high air pollution (perhaps near industrial plants, etc.) had a high correlation to violent crime rates in conjunction with highly dense populated areas.

mnw21cam 7y ago
I'm sure https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ is relevant.
- codeduck 7y ago
  It correlates.
  - close04 7y ago
    https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations (or https://tylervigen.com/old-version.html https://tylervigen.com/old-version.html ). Just in case anyone ever needs come correlation resources :).
    - codeduck 7y ago
      I was being glib about the relevance of the xkcd :-)
    - magashna 7y ago
      Some of those are interesting just because I never assumed it happened or it was being tracked. And some of them are a surprising scale. 800 deaths from being tangled in bedsheets!
    - Symmetry 7y ago
      First, there's a plausible biological link between lead and violence. We can performed double-blind controlled experiments with mice and see it. Second, violence decreased in a given state 15 years after that particular state banned leaded gasoline. And it decreased for the particular cohort that had grown up without leaded gasoline but not particularly otherwise. At a certain point you're left saying something like "Every time I point this gun at someone and pull the trigger they get struck by a bullet but this could be a spurious correlation!"
huffmsa 7y ago
Except it's not a case of ice cream and summer time. Lead fucks people up. Always has, always will. Pretty easy to trace a relationship between lead concentrations and societal disfunction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
- Armisael16 7y ago
  The article specifically mentions the lead-crime hypothesis as a different example of hypothesized linkages between air pollution and crime. It seems exceptionally likely that it isn’t what they’re looking at. This paper specifically looks at short term air pollution effect (ie, the kinds that will measurably rise and fall in different parts of a city over an 8-year span). Lead takes so long to affect a single person (since it mostly harms brain development in children, but crimes are mostly not committed by children) that it almost certainly being meaningfully measured here.
  - mirthflat83 7y ago
    Hacker news and not reading the article before commenting name a more classic combination
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    Of course I didn't read the article. I hear it's paywall, and I and the economist's paywall really don't get along. But, it being a short term study doesn't change much. A temporary increase in pollutants will serve to exacerbate underlying conditions. Supposing areas which experience the largest increase in the short term were also susceptible to higher levels historical, and most impacted by previous short term increases and we're back where we started.
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    And we're currently in this weird situation where older criminals are more violent than younger criminals, in contravention of how things typically go, because older criminals were exposed to lead as children.

mnw21cam 7y ago

I'm sure https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ is relevant.

codeduck 7y ago
It correlates.
- close04 7y ago
  https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations (or https://tylervigen.com/old-version.html https://tylervigen.com/old-version.html ). Just in case anyone ever needs come correlation resources :).
  - codeduck 7y ago
    I was being glib about the relevance of the xkcd :-)
  - magashna 7y ago
    Some of those are interesting just because I never assumed it happened or it was being tracked. And some of them are a surprising scale. 800 deaths from being tangled in bedsheets!
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    First, there's a plausible biological link between lead and violence. We can performed double-blind controlled experiments with mice and see it. Second, violence decreased in a given state 15 years after that particular state banned leaded gasoline. And it decreased for the particular cohort that had grown up without leaded gasoline but not particularly otherwise. At a certain point you're left saying something like "Every time I point this gun at someone and pull the trigger they get struck by a bullet but this could be a spurious correlation!"

huffmsa 7y ago

Except it's not a case of ice cream and summer time. Lead fucks people up. Always has, always will. Pretty easy to trace a relationship between lead concentrations and societal disfunction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

Armisael16 7y ago
The article specifically mentions the lead-crime hypothesis as a different example of hypothesized linkages between air pollution and crime. It seems exceptionally likely that it isn’t what they’re looking at. This paper specifically looks at short term air pollution effect (ie, the kinds that will measurably rise and fall in different parts of a city over an 8-year span). Lead takes so long to affect a single person (since it mostly harms brain development in children, but crimes are mostly not committed by children) that it almost certainly being meaningfully measured here.
- mirthflat83 7y ago
  Hacker news and not reading the article before commenting name a more classic combination
- huffmsa 7y ago
  Of course I didn't read the article. I hear it's paywall, and I and the economist's paywall really don't get along. But, it being a short term study doesn't change much. A temporary increase in pollutants will serve to exacerbate underlying conditions. Supposing areas which experience the largest increase in the short term were also susceptible to higher levels historical, and most impacted by previous short term increases and we're back where we started.
- Symmetry 7y ago
  And we're currently in this weird situation where older criminals are more violent than younger criminals, in contravention of how things typically go, because older criminals were exposed to lead as children.