Almost every day you can find in media commentary that XYZ is causing stocks to fall (or rise). Such definitive statements are common—but what’s almost always missing is statistical proof. And if you ...

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and ...

In the first case, there is a strong upward-sloping relationship between X and Y; in the second case, no apparent relationship; in the third case, a strong downward-sloping relationship. Note the ...

Suppose estimates are available for correlations between pairs of variables but that the matrix of correlation estimates is not positive definite. In various applications, having a valid correlation ...

Correlation doesn't imply causation. You've probably heard that before. It's a true statement that's important in statistical analysis—if more tall people own cats, that doesn't mean that cats cause ...

Depressed people send more email. They spend more time on Gchat. Researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology recently assessed some college students for signs of melancholia then ...

Statistical mechanics provides a fundamental framework for understanding how collective phenomena in many-body systems give rise to macroscopic changes in state, known as phase transitions. Research ...