吸烟与肺癌的关系真的有那么大吗_BEC初级作文

吸烟与肺癌的关系真的有那么大吗

科学家、经济学家和统计学家倾向于要求为他们看到的现象提出因果解释。知道大学毕业生能赚更多钱还不够，我们想知道，大学教育是否提高了他们的收入，或者他们本来就是聪明人、不管接受大学教育与否都能赚更多钱。仅仅寻找相关性并非严格科学的做法。

But with the advent of “big data” this argument has started to shift. Large data sets can throw up intriguing correlations that may be good enough for some purposes. (Who cares why price cuts are most effective on a Tuesday? If it’s Tuesday, cut the price.) Andy Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England, recently argued that economists might want to take mere correlations more seriously. He is not the first big-data enthusiast to say so.

但随着“大数据”的到来，这场争论开始发生变化。海量数据集可以产生一些有趣的相关性，在某些用途上它们就足够好用了（谁关心为何周二降价效果最好呢？如果确是这样，那就选这一天降价。）英国央行(BoE)首席经济学家安德鲁•霍尔丹(Andy Haldane)不久前表示，经济学家们或许想更认真地看待纯粹相关性(mere correlation)。他不是第一个这么说的大数据热衷者。

This brings us back to smoking and cancer. When the British epidemiologist Richard Doll first began to suspect the link in the late 1940s, his analysis was based on a mere correlation. The causal mechanism was unclear, as most of the carcinogens in tobacco had not been identified; Doll himself suspected that lung cancer was caused by fumes from tarmac roads, or possibly cars themselves.