Water Bottles and Hurricane
A strong correlation has been discovered between items such as water bottles, batteries and flashlights AND hurricanes. Every time there is uptick in the the sale of water bottles, batteries and flashlights, it surely signals that hurricane is on its way in next 24 to 72 hours. So far, this has been proved with data time and time again.
Please take a look at the following:
+-----+----------+-----+-----+------+------+
| SN | Area | WB | FL | Batt | TTHA |
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| 1 | Texas | 61% | 92% | 65% | 20 |
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| 2 | Kansas | 64% | 35% | 54% | 20 |
+-----+----------+-----+-----+------+------+
| ... | Area 57 | 35% | 76% | 35% | 30 |
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| 9 | Arkansas | 33% | 5% | 17% | 20 |
+-----+----------+-----+-----+------+------+
| 10 | Georgia | 44% | 37% | 83% | 20 |
+-----+----------+-----+-----+------+------+Source - Fictitious Data Publishing Company
Explanation of the columns:
SN — Serial Number
Area — Area/State/Region in North America
WB — Uptick in % in sale of water bottles
FL — Uptick in % in sale of flashlights
Batt — Uptick in % in sale of batteries
TTHA — Time to hurricane arrival
As you can clearly see, every time there is combined uptick in a sale of water bottles, flashlights and batteries, a hurricane has arrived within 36 hours. Well this does not mean that hurricane will arrive within 36 hours only. The window is not fixed, and hurricane being, hurricane, may come come sooner or later
Why can’t it be the other way round?
Well that is impossible, given the fact that the uptick in sale has happened before the arrival of hurricane.
Few facts of life
Correlation describes the size and direction of a relationship between two or more variables. A correlation between variables does not automatically mean that the change in one variable is the cause of the change in the values of the other variable.
Causation indicates that one event is the result of the occurrence of the other event; that is there is a causal relationship between the two events. If one event occurs such as ‘uptick in sale of bottles’ then ‘hurricane’ will surely follow. This is also referred to as cause and effect.
