Spurious correlation

Spurious correlation is a term coined by Karl Pearson to describe the correlation between ratios of absolute measurements that arises as a consequence of using ratios, rather than because of any actual correlations between the measurements.

The phenomenon of spurious correlation is one of the main motives for the field of compositional data analysis which deals with the analysis of variables that carry only relative information, such as proportions, percentages and parts-per-million.