Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

I see you're not using JavaScript (which is awesome!) on one of my pages that uses it to provide a better experience. If you see something not working right, please let me know. My site should work exactly the same without it apart from any exceptions noted here.

I use prism.min.js to do syntax highlighting. It clocks in at 23kb total in size. Since the majority of the writing I do involves coding, I personally find this to be a worthwhile trade off. If you choose to keep this disabled, rest assured, the code examples are still there, they just may have some extra whitespace and obviously no syntax highlighting.

I do no tracking at all and am a zealot about keeping my pages as small as possible. If you're reading a page of mine that transfers more than about 250kb over the wire (including my most gratuitous indulgence — fonts) I've messed up.

So, if you'd like to have a slightly richer experience, consider enabling javascript for my site and I promise your trust won't be misplaced.

202501061020 Correlation does not equal causation

A correlation between events does not mean that one event causes the other. In order to determine causation, we typically need to show that directionality exists between the events. That is, we need to show that we make controlled changes to the causal event and see the expected changes in the dependent event. In some circumstances, we may also be able to control the dependent event and see that it does not change the independent one.

For examples, see the humorous website Spurious Correlations by Tyler Vigen.¹

Vigen, T. (2013). 15 Insane Things That Correlate With Each Other. Spurious Correlations. http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations ↩