YDD has the comment of the day over at Capitol Fax:
Southern Illinois Boy – Let me help you out. Those indicted and implicated are all friends, appointees, employees, major campaign contributors, or political allies of Governor Blagojevich.
In scientific terms, that’s a correlation of roughly 100%.
Generally there is a rule in stats–if you find a correlation near 100% you are essentially using proxy measures of the same phenomenon.
Clear now?
what percentage of friends, appointees, employees, major campaign contributors or political allies of Blago have been indicted or implicated?
Because, I bet that’s less than 100%. You’re dealing with subsets, not equivalent sets.
– dbt, defender of stats