"Mr. Leinweber got so frustrated by 'irresponsible' data mining that he decided to satirize it. After casting about to find a statistic so absurd that no sensible person could possibly believe it could forecast U.S. stock prices, Mr. Leinweber settled on annual butter production in Bangladesh. Over an 13-year period, he found, this statistic 'explained' 75% of the variation in the annual returns of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.
By tossing in U.S. cheese production and the total population of sheep in both Bangladesh and the U.S., Mr. Leinweber was able to 'predict' past U.S. stock returns with 99% accuracy."
