Seeing Patterns

I was struck by a comparison between Journalists and Statisticians.

Journalism is often about spotting and elaborating on (perceived) patterns.
Whereas statistics is about actual patterns.

When journalist see 2 or 3 things that appear to have some connection they think "pattern"! If this turns out to be a load of rubbish and plainly wrong it is quickly forgotten. A good example of this is with football commentary. Go back over what supposed football experts have said even just a week back and you're sure to see this.

This seems like a form of data mining and hypothesis generation so naturally you will always find something that looks like a pattern if you look hard enough.

Statistics on the otherhand- proper statistics- is the art of looking at something that looks like a pattern and thinking "random noise!". The journalist is too optimistic of his discovery and the statistician is conversely pessimistic.

In fact, this article is a case of me thinking that I've spotted something between 2 things. This could similarly just be nonsense.