Simpson’s Paradox

Abstract

Simpson's paradox, or the Yule–Simpson effect, is a phenomenon in probability and statistics, in which a trend appears in several different groups of data but disappears or reverses when these groups are combined. It is sometimes given the descriptive title reversal paradox or amalgamation paradox. This result is often encountered in social-science and medical-science statistics and is particularly problematic when frequency data is unduly given causal interpretations. The paradoxical elements disappear when causal relations are brought into consideration. It has been used to try to inform the non-specialist or public audience about the kind of misleading results mis-applied statistics can generate. Martin Gardner wrote a popular account of Simpson's paradox in his March 1976 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Edward H. Simpson first described this phenomenon in a technical paper in 1951, but the statisticians Karl Pearson et al., in 1899, and Udny Yule, in 1903, had mentioned similar effects earlier. The name Simpson's paradox was introduced by Colin R. Blyth in 1972.