Consider the following statistic: Between 2001 and 2009, the yearly consumption of cheese in the U.S. was highly correlated with the number of people who died by becoming entangled in their bed sheets.18 This is a fact; the numbers prove it. However, the phenomena are probably not causally related—it was just a coincidence. But if we only trust the numbers, we may be led to believe that cheese consumption and bed sheet strangulation are related phenomena.
