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Originally Posted by mike alexander
First sentence I agree with completely. Second I would qualify by saying that if the correlation increases as the sampled population increases you might be looking at a real causal link.
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I'm not sure if that's what you actually meant to write, but note that I did not speak of the correlation increasing as the sample size increases...
However, if you dump enough raw data into a sample, any correlation, no matter how tiny (and irrelevant in practice) will eventually become statistically significant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mike alexander
Part of the problem is that in my line of work an r of 0.5 would get me laughed out of the room.
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Yes, statistical significance must always be weighted against other considerations, one of which is the practical context.