I’m back on my data hunt for my course project to develop a web app…and I came across a research paper that explored factors associated with fertility in a small district in India*. The abstract of the paper begins with:
“This paper focuses on the cause and effect relations on human fertility. Here fertility is used as the number of children ever born for a woman….”
“Conclusion: Higher employment, higher income of both husband and wife and nuclear family system could bring the reduction in the fertility level of the women in Kanyakumari district”

CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION – BAHHHHHH
I know that this research paper was probably trying to assess what causes the high birth rate in this particular district, but I think the translation and the way the conclusions have been made make this a paper a funny read if you are into that kind of geekery. So Ladies – lose the jobs, dumb up your brain cells and knock a few out of your husband too, and don’t worry, age is not correlated with fertility, that is if we want to learn some lessons from Kanyakumari district!
Oh yes and here is another one of my favourite xkcds.

Cancer Causes Cell Phones – Duh!
* K. Senthamarai Kannan* and V. Nagarajan, “Factor and Multiple Regression Analysis for Human Fertility in Kanyakumari District“. Available at: http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/T-Anth/Anth-10-0-000-08-Web/Anth-10-3-000-08-Abst-PDF/Anth-10-3-211-08-416-Kannan-K-S/Anth-10-3-211-08-416-Kannan-K-S-Tt.pdf
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