Correlations

Question 1

What is a Correlation?

Answer 1

• Mathematical technique which measures relationships/association between two variables (co-variables)
• Relationships are plotted on scattergrams where each axis represents a variable
• can also be analysed using statistical tests

Question 2

How to work out what a coefficient means

Answer 2

• a value of +1 represents a perfect positive correlation and -1 a perfect negative correlation
• closer correlation is to 1 stronger the relationship between the co-variables are
• some coefficients that appear to indicate weak correlations may still be significant depending on the sample size of the data