Want to cut road deaths? Then get importing melons

Must be true. After all, this graph with American data and its ‘statistically significant’ correlation says so:

The data and the correlation are both solid, even if the conclusion is up there in the bizarre correlations stakes with the mountain murder graph.

The need to have a model within which to understand numbers is even better demonstrated here – and shows how you can’t do maths isolated from an understanding of the outside world.

The trouble, of course, is that once you do let those judgements from the outside world in then the maths can be both technically correct and horribly wrong in its apparent lessons or predictions.