There are a number of different versions of the formula for computing Pearson's \(r\). You should get the same correlation value regardless of which formula you use. The following table may serve as a guideline when evaluating correlation coefficients: Absolute Value of \(r\) The correlation between \(x\) and \(y\) is equal to the correlation between \(y\) and \(x\).
It does not matter which variable you label as \(x\) and which you label as \(y\).Correlation is unit free the \(x\) and \(y\) variables do NOT need to be on the same scale (e.g., it is possible to compute the correlation between height in centimeters and weight in pounds).The closer \(r\) is to \(0\) the weaker the relationship and the closer to \(+1\) or \(-1\) the stronger the relationship (e.g., \(r=-0.88\) is a stronger relationship than \(r=+0.60\)) the sign of the correlation provides direction only.For a positive association, \(r>0\), for a negative association \(rThis is also known as an indirect relationship.Ī bivariate outlier is an observation that does not fit with the general pattern of the other observations. For example, as values of x get larger values of y get smaller. The linear relationship between two variables is negative when one increases as the other decreases. This is also known as a direct relationship. The linear relationship between two variables is positive when both increase together in other words, as values of x get larger values of y get larger.
This occurs when the line-of-best-fit for describing the relationship between x and y is a straight line. In this class, we will focus on linear relationships. When examining a scatterplot, we need to consider the following: Scatterplot A graphical representation of two quantitative variables in which the explanatory variable is on the x-axis and the response variable is on the y-axis.