Correlation (r)
−0.55
Opposite direction across 134 months. Closer to −1 would mean a perfect mirror.
Charts searched
185
Bowling won the weirdness pass. Strong numbers get easier when you hunt that hard.
A simple correlate-with title on purpose: two real series, one declarative line, and r in the page title — same joke shape as classic Spurious Correlations charts. Pattern match only. Not a claim that one caused the other.
A chart can look convincing even when the two things have nothing useful to do with each other. Saying “among 185 tries” is part of the finding.
If this were causal (it isn’t)
As Minecraft search interest rose, kids stayed home crafting dirt houses instead of renting shoes. Wikipedia’s bowling page grew lonely. The lanes went quiet. Wall Street somehow… no. That story is the joke. The chart is real. The cause is not.
How bowling won the hunt
I wanted a Spurious Correlations style Minecraft chart: real public numbers, lined up by month, ranked for how strong and how silly the pairing looked.
After checking 185 outside series (prices, jobs, food, and Wikipedia pages), bowling Wikipedia opens scored highest on that mix. Over 134 shared months from mid-2015 through mid-2026, Minecraft U.S. search interest and bowling page opens moved opposite: about −0.55.
In plain words: months when Minecraft search interest ran hotter in this window often lined up with quieter bowling Wikipedia traffic, and the other way around. That is a mirror pattern, not a scoreboard of “Minecraft killed bowling.”
Minecraft search interest vs bowling Wikipedia opens
Two different thermometers on one timeline. Green is Google’s relative Minecraft score (0–100 in this window). Orange is how many times people opened Wikipedia’s Bowling page. Opposite slopes can still look “connected.”
Two thermometers, not one story
Google Trends is a relative interest score for the word “Minecraft” in the United States. 100 means the peak in that Trends window. It is not players online.
Wikipedia opens count how often people loaded the encyclopedia page titled Bowling. That is curiosity about bowling, not lanes sold or games played.
Stack those two public charts and you can get a neat opposite move. Stack enough unrelated charts and you should expect neat moves sometimes. That is the whole lesson.
See also
Month-to-month wiggles are much weaker
If I look at percent change from one month to the next, the link shrinks to about −0.18. The big opposite move is more about long shapes of the two charts than about bowling and Minecraft twitching together every month.
That is a useful check. A headline correlation can look fierce while the month-to-month story is mild.
Why publish a fake-looking relationship on purpose
Because the fake-looking part is the point. Mining Minecraft usually hunts answers that change how you play or how you read a number. This leaf is the other job: show how easy it is to find a convincing chart when you are allowed to search hundreds of pairings.
Keep the joke. Keep the receipts. Do not keep the causal story.
U.S. Minecraft search interest correlates with bowling Wikipedia opens (r = −0.55, 134 months) — the weirdest match among 185 charts I checked. Correlation still is not causation.
How I calculated it
Anchor: Google Trends term “Minecraft,” United States, monthly series I saved (interest above zero). Outside series: Wikimedia monthly pageviews for English Wikipedia Bowling (all-access, user). Overlap: 2015-07 through 2026-08 · n = 134. Pearson r = −0.553 · R² = 0.306 · Spearman ρ = −0.581. Month-over-month % change Pearson r = −0.184 (133 pairs). Parent hunt: 185 catalog series (prices, jobs, food, Wikipedia culture pages), then a weirdness pass for the funniest strong matches.
I searched many pairings on purpose, so a strong match was likely somewhere. Google Trends scores are relative to the peak in that window, not a player count. Wikipedia opens are page loads, not bowling trips. Late months can look thin if the save was incomplete (August 2026 bowling opens look unfinished; dropping that month barely changes r). Opposite movement is not a claim that Minecraft emptied alleys, or that bowling emptied Minecraft.
Sources
- Google Trends: term “Minecraft”, United States, monthly extract (as-of 2026-08-08).
- Wikimedia Pageviews API: English Wikipedia article Bowling, monthly, all-access, user.
- Parent weird-chart hunt: 185 public monthly/annual series ranked against the same Minecraft Trends anchor (this run).
- Inspired by the public lesson in Tyler Vigen’s Spurious Correlations (his charts are CC BY 4.0; this leaf uses primary Trends and Wikipedia data).
