Margarine and the divorce rate in Maine: a love story
US margarine consumption and Maine’s divorce rate, overlaid on hand-tuned dual axes until a 0.99 correlation looks like a national scandal.
The claim
Margarine is wrecking Maine’s marriages — as America gave up the spread, the divorce rate fell in lockstep.
The trick
Two knobs do all the work. First, dredge tens of thousands of series until two happen to drift together — both of these simply declined through the 2000s, like landlines, VCRs, and smoking. Then hand-pick the dual y-axis ranges (4.0–5.1 divorces on the left, 3.4–8.6 lbs on the right) so the lines embrace. The r = 0.9926 is real arithmetic; the relationship is not.
The honest version
Drawn separately on zero-based axes, each series is an unremarkable decade-long drift with no mechanism connecting them. A 0.99 correlation is what data dredging buys you — search enough variable pairs and coincidences this tight are guaranteed.