Correlations

I've been a big fan of the Southern Poverty Law Center ever since I heard one of their attorneys speak at a lecture sponsored by my law school. The SPLC is a non-profit civil rights law firm and educational institution. Like most non-profits, funding is always tight so chip in if you like what they're about. I remember one particular passage from the speech that day. The speaker described how prison sentences for particular crimes were compared through the lens of the race of the perpetrator and the race of the victim. Not surprisingly they found that the harshest sentences (for identical crimes) went to black perpetrators of crimes against whites. The shocking part came when the statistical analysis was performed. Statistically speaking, the correlation between race (victim and perpetrator) and the sentence imposed, was stronger than the correlation between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer. Marlboro executives overheard saying: Seriously?