" 

 I am appalled that this page has been listed on votes for deletion.  It is a very nicely written  even if stubby  article on a topic of importance in scientific inference.   
 :Likewise, but not surprised, anymore.    
 ::Guys, don't you know in America the word ""relationship"" means something else? Doubtless, a relationship based only on ice cream is spurious, and hence the article was a tautology.   

 What is the difference between spurious variables and antecedent variables? I can't tell from the article.   

 I can't tell either.  I'm editing the article appropriately.    

 ""Confounding variable"" is redirected to this article, but ""confounding factor"" has its own stub article that contains essentially only the ice cream example and links to two other articles, one of which is this.  Shouldn't confounding factor be redirected here also, and that stub be deleted?    
 *I say no: I came to this page looking for an explanation of confounding variables. Thankfully, I found the link to the confounding factor page, which gave me what I needed. Confounding variables are an important topic in experimental design, and simply redirecting the page here is misleading. I've redirected confounding variable to confounding factor, added the stats-stub tag to confounding factor, and added a mention of experimental design to it. -  

 ==Error in this Article== 

 Hey, this isn't right, could someone fix it?  From the article: 

 > In practice, three conditions must be met in order to conclude that X causes Y, directly or indirectly: 
 >     * X must precede Y 
 >     * Y must not occur when X does not occur 
 >     * Y must occur whenever X occurs 

 > Spurious relationships can often be identified by considering whether any of these three conditions have been violated. 

 > The final condition may be relaxed in the case of indirect causation.  

 Now rain (X) may cause me to stay in (Y); that is, I stay in whenever it rains, but I may stay in when it doesn't rain (because it may be snowing, for example).  So clearly there are obvious cases when the second condition may be relaxed, rather than the third. 

 In fact, the example of the pistol shot causing the death of the man doesn't even work, as the guy could die from a metiorite, thus violating the second condition, or he could be kept alive by the doctor, thus violating the third.   

 The only condition that seems to be really relevant is the first. 

 So, what was actually meant here?? 

 :I agree. ""Y must not occur when X does not occur"" is wrong. It's not necessary for Y to have only one possible cause.    

 ::I added an exception to the second condition covering this objection. I also added a second exception to the third condition and a note that the the conditions are necessary to prove causation but not sufficient. I may have gone a bit off-topic on the latter.    

 == Combine ""Spurious Relationship"" and ""Joint Effect"" == 

 I would agree that this should be combined with ""Spurious Relationship"", as this page only recites a different version (with a few extra comments) on the ice cream example mentioned in ""Spurious Relationship: General Example"". It might also work to change ""General Example"" to ""Joint Effect"", and insert the text from ""Joint Effect"" in its place. 

 Retrieved from ""http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Joint_effect"" 

 I took the step of deleting the redundant text in ""joint effect"" and redirecting to this entry. - Aug 28 2006 

 I removed the 'mergewith' tag, now the merge is complete.   

 ==Spurious correlation== 
 Should this stub be merged here? A correlecation is a subtype of a relationship, I'd think.|  

 I caution merging these two articles.