Number of craft breweries in the US

As craft breweries have proliferated across America, choking deaths on food have risen, a correlation of 0.993 that sounds like a public health warning about drinking and eating simultaneously and is actually just two upward trends doing what they always do: correlating perfectly across the same timeline while sharing no mechanism whatsoever. The IPA pours, the food lodges, and the chart treats both events with equal mathematical composure.

Craft breweries grew from about 1,400 to over 9,500 between 2005 and 2021. Choking deaths rose with the aging population. Both metrics are smooth upward curves across seventeen years, and the correlation is their mathematical consequence. Craft brewery customers are predominantly 25–45; choking death victims are predominantly 65+. The demographics barely overlap, but the shapes perfectly align, which is all a Pearson coefficient cares about.

Seventeen years of craft breweries and choking deaths is a reminder that the Pearson correlation coefficient does not care about age demographics, causal mechanisms, or whether two trends have ever been in the same room. It cares about shape. Two upward shapes produce a high number. The brewery opens, the elderly choke, and the coefficient sits at 0.993 with the confident vacancy of a number that has confused geometry with causation.