Causal Inflation Ratio (CIR)

The Causal Inflation Ratio measures the expansion of a familiar event's causal burden: the number of evidentiary propositions a panel supplies (T), divided by the number of motive-bearing propositions in the canonical source (B). The canonical chicken-crossing joke contains exactly one motive; Working Paper No. 44 records seven evidentiary propositions, yielding CIR = 7.0×.

The instrument should not be mistaken for an accepted method in folklore studies, criminology, statistics, or any discipline with an accreditation process. It quantifies causal overdetermination humor: a familiar event whose traditional comedy depends upon lack of explanation, reconstructed using an absurd surplus of explanation.