Correlation (r)
+0.75
Same direction across 15 years. Closer to +1 would mean a near-perfect lockstep.
Charts searched
185
Yogurt won the annual food lane. Short yearly series make strong r easier.
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” — and “only 15 years” — is part of the finding.
If this were causal (it isn’t)
As Minecraft search interest rose, players needed spoonable fuel for long mining shifts. Yogurt sales climbed. Probiotic cultures celebrated. Dairy futures… no. That story is the joke. The chart is real. The cause is not.
How yogurt won the annual lane
After checking 185 outside series (prices, jobs, food, and Wikipedia pages), U.S. per capita yogurt stood out as the strongest annual positive lock with Minecraft search interest: about +0.75 across 2010–2024.
In plain words: years when the Minecraft Trends thermometer ran hotter in this window often lined up with slightly higher yogurt pounds per person. That is a same-direction pattern, not a scoreboard of “Minecraft sold yogurt.”
Minecraft search interest vs yogurt per person
Two different thermometers on one timeline. Green is the calendar-year mean of U.S. Minecraft Google Trends (0–100). Orange is USDA yogurt pounds per person (other than frozen). Shared long shapes can still look “connected.”
Two thermometers, not one story
Google Trends is a relative interest score for the word “Minecraft” in the United States. Here I average the months in each calendar year. 100 means the peak in that Trends window. It is not players online.
Yogurt is USDA ERS pounds per person of yogurt other than frozen. That is grocery disappearance, not cups eaten while mining.
Stack those two public charts and you can get a neat same-way move. Stack enough unrelated charts and you should expect neat moves sometimes. That is the whole lesson.
See also
Year-to-year wiggles are much weaker
If I look at percent change from one year to the next, the link shrinks to about +0.15. The big same-way move is more about long shapes of the two charts than about yogurt and Minecraft twitching together every year.
That is a useful check. A headline correlation can look fierce while the year-to-year story is mild.
Why publish a fake-looking relationship on purpose
Because the fake-looking part is the point. Fifteen yearly dots can look like destiny. Hunting hundreds of pairings makes strong r easier to find.
Keep the joke. Keep the receipts. Do not keep the causal story.
U.S. Minecraft search interest correlates with U.S. per capita yogurt (r = +0.75, 15 years) — the strongest annual 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), then calendar-year mean. Outside series: USDA ERS dairy per capita, Yogurt, other than frozen (lbs per person). Overlap: 2010 through 2024 · n = 15. Pearson r = +0.748 · R² = 0.560 · Spearman ρ = 0.700. Year-over-year % change Pearson r = +0.147 (14 pairs). Parent hunt: 185 catalog series, then a weirdness pass for the funniest strong matches.
I searched many pairings on purpose, so a strong match was likely somewhere. Fifteen years is a short series; shared long trends inflate level r. Google Trends scores are relative to the peak in that window, not a player count. Yogurt pounds are disappearance estimates, not cups eaten at the keyboard. Same-direction movement is not a claim that Minecraft stocked the dairy aisle.
Sources
- Google Trends: term “Minecraft”, United States, monthly extract (as-of 2026-08-08); annual = mean of months with interest > 0.
- USDA ERS: dairy products per capita — Yogurt, other than frozen (lbs per person).
- 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 USDA data).
