



I didn’t have this ready in time for the contest Microsoft was running, and I’m not sure they would have wanted this to represent PowerPivot in an “official” sense so it likely wouldn’t have won anyway.

But here it is folks – a data mashup of UFO sightings versus Hallucinogenic drug usage. All sourced from real data, for the United States only, between 1930 and 2000.

To place everything on the same scale, all measures are “indexed” against their maximum. UFO sightings peaked in 1999 and declined slightly in 2000 for instance, so 1999 is where the green line hits 100%. And I indexed LSD and Ecstasy versus total Hallucinogen usage (of all types), so neither of those lines ever hits 100%

Before you go concluding that drug usage leads to UFO sightings that are merely hallucinations, remember that correlation is not causality. It is just as likely that UFO pilots are drawn to drug usage. They are particularly fond of spying on raves, apparently.