Storks_Deliver_Babies_p_0008.pdf
Summary This article shows that a highly statistically significant correlation exists between stork populations and human birth rates across Europe. While storks may not deliver babies, unthinking interpretation of correlation and p-values can certainly deliver unreliable conclusions.
Plotting the number of stork pairs against the number of births in each of the 17 countries, one can discern signs of a possible correlation between the two (see figure 1). The existence of this correlation is confirmed by performing a linear regression of the annual number of births in each country (the final column in table 1) against the number of breeding pairs of white storks (column 3). This leads to a correlation coefficient of r = 0X62, whose statistical significance can be gauged using the standard t-test, where trpn2a1r2 and n is the sample size. In our case, n 17 so that t 3X06, which for n 2 15 degrees of freedom leads to a p-value of 0.008.