A nice lesson from STATS (checking out the facts behind the news)

Here is a link to a STATS article, “Fingering the Media”. It shows why much of the statistical quotes in the media are nonsense.

Here are a few excerpts from the article.

The media just loves a finger story. Last year, the Express Newspaper of the U.K. reported on a study finding that male aggression is linked to finger length – the longer the ring finger is as compared to the index finger, the more likely the male is to be aggressive.

The problem with these kinds of studies is two fold. First, these researchers don’t have a plausible mechanism to justify their claim.

Secondly, there are rarely studies published about what finger-length is not correlated with. Some might argue this is irrelevant, but it actually is extremely relevant from a statistical point of view.

Any time you test for a correlation, there is a small possibility (about five percent) that you will measure a relationship (such as finger-length and athletic talent) when it isn’t actually present in the whole population. These “findings” will seem as “true” as any other statistical finding, such as the fact that lung cancer and smoking are correlated. But this means that if you try to correlate twenty different traits to finger length –even if none of them are actually related to finger length – you will likely find some correlation, just by chance.