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This is rather silly (and not in the way intended). The goal of the paper is to demonstrate a strong linear correlation which arises without a trivial confound
by jmmcd 5y ago
This is rather silly (and not in the way intended).
The goal of the paper is to demonstrate a strong linear correlation which arises without a trivial confounder (such as age influencing both reading age and shoe size in children). However, the confounder in the case of storks (country land area influences number of storks and absolute number of births) IS trivial.
- OJFord 5y ago> One candidate for a potential confounding variable is land area: readers are invited to investigate this possibility using the data in table 1.
- jmmcd 5y agoYes - to be clear, the author knows this is the confounder. That's why it was silly of the author to claim that the paper would describe a correlation without a trivial confounder.
- hedora 5y agoLand area isn't well-correlated with the other three columns in the table.
- jmmcd 5y agoYes it is! I calculated R = 0.58, 0.81, 0.92, respectively. These will be highly significant, comparable to the p-value in the headline. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QTEB7KF1PXBV_TjgBsuVTQ0OPldV9yiJ3_lYvTZEdeQ/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QTEB7KF1PXBV_TjgBsuV...