Interpreting the results

Of course, the results don't tell us a whole lot. For one, we have to remember that just because there's a relationship, that doesn't imply causality. Moreover, because the result is so significant, we should probably be skeptical about the results and whether they're caused by some artifact in the data or the procedures.

We've already talked about the problems in the data, and some of them may be at fault. Particularly, some of the data is missing because of normalization problems, which may change the results. Another possibility is that industrialized nations keep better records, so they would appear to have more burglaries.