Calls instantly-to-mind..
In The Year of the Jackpot, the protagonist, Potiphaar Breen IS a Statistician ('50s) when the slide-rule was about as far as mechanization of his trade had gotten.
The entire (lovely) story is about.. what this is the antonym-for!!

(ie Significant-correlations extirpated from an unsorted/unsortable! melange of the rawest-of-data, Evah.)
Only a (rare==Observant) human mind could work-from his prime observation of a convergence of Minima AND Maxima--foretold.
Whereas, the above is a perfect-demo of The Bogus; pitfall of every Teapartier and selective-excerpter of sentences from this/That 'holybook' du jour.

The world Needs more such er, pellucid Illustrations-you-don't-want-to leave home ..without.
Saved.