More Potatoes, Fewer Olympic Medals?!?

Why this correlation is stupid

The numbers above are real. Public data on Potato Production and US Summer Olympic Total Medal Count happens to move inversely closely enough to produce r ≈ 49% (negative) — a value high enough that, in a less skeptical world, someone would file a Substack post about it. Here, it earns a chart and a chuckle.

Statisticians call this a spurious correlation: two trends that share a shape without sharing a cause. With enough variables tracked over enough years, you can find pairings like this one between almost any two phenomena. Confounding factors, common drivers (population growth, smartphone adoption, the unstoppable march of time), or pure chance can all make graphs hold hands.

Source data is drawn from public datasets. We do not endorse any causal claim — only the comedic one.