People who own a standalone GPS

As Americans have eaten more chicken per capita, they have simultaneously abandoned their standalone GPS devices, a correlation that raises the question of whether navigation and poultry are somehow in competition for the same household budget. The data suggests that the more chicken a nation consumes, the less it needs a dedicated device to tell it where it is going, which is either profound or meaningless. Sixteen years of data points suggest the latter, but the scatter plot remains suggestive.

Standalone GPS ownership peaked around 2008–20010 when brands like Garmin and TomTom dominated dashboard navigation, then declined steeply as smartphones with Google Maps and Apple Maps made dedicated devices redundant. From about 30 percent of households owning one to under 10 percent by 2022, the decline was swift and irreversible. Chicken consumption, meanwhile, continued its decades-long climb from about 82 pounds per capita to over 98 pounds, driven by health trends, fast-food innovation, and competitive pricing. The negative correlation exists simply because one metric was going steadily up while the other was going steadily down across the same sixteen-year window. The GPS was killed by the smartphone; the chicken was helped by the Popeyes sandwich. Different forces, same timeline.

Sixteen years of chicken rising and GPS devices falling is a reminder that any two monotonic trends will produce an impressive correlation if you chart them on the same axes. The chicken did not replace the GPS, and the GPS never had an opinion about poultry. They simply moved through the same decade in opposite directions, like commuters on different escalators. Recalculating.