Pumpkin Spice Fuels Romance
US Pumpkin Spice Product Sales vs Online Dating App Users
As pumpkin spice sales soared, dating app users multiplied. Apparently, the path to love runs through a Starbucks drive-thru. Basic is the new black.
“The pumpkin-spice-industrial complex has evolved into the world's most effective matchmaker.”
— Dr. Latte Cupid, Behavioral Economist
Real correlation, fake causation
To turn this r ≈ 96% (positive) relationship between US Pumpkin Spice Product Sales and Online Dating App Users into an actual scientific finding, you would need a plausible mechanism, controlled experiments, and replication across independent datasets. We have none of those. We have a chart that goes up at roughly the same rate twice.
That is the whole game of spurious correlations: the math is fine, the meaning is missing. Two lines can rise together because the population grew, because both phenomena are downstream of the same cultural shift, or because the universe has a sense of humor. Picking the comedic interpretation is the only honest move.
Quote attributed to Dr. Latte Cupid, Behavioral Economist is fictional and intended for entertainment.
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