Correlation does not equal causation. How many times have we heard that mantra? Back in 2014, Tyler Vigen produced some charts that brought together two curves from entirely two different unrelated sources, like “People who drowned after falling out of a fishing boat correlates with Marriage rate in Kentucky” or “Number of people who were electrocuted by power lines correlates with Marriage rate in Alabama.”

Ten years later, in January 2024, Vigen revamped his Spurious Correlations collection:

In January 2024, I released a big update to the project based on user feedback. I added 25,000 new variables, improved and expanded the discover feature, and added a sprinkle of GenAI (including spurious scholar).

Now every crazy non-causal—but maybe plausible?—correlation is accompanied by an AI-generated illustration, explanation, and “research” paper. For example, in “The number of dietetic technicians in North Carolina correlates with Viewership count for Days of Our Lives,” the AI explanation is:

The shortage led to a lack of food-related subplots and characters, making the show less engaging for food enthusiasts.

Click the random button a few times to get some laughs.