Answer: weak positive association
Explanation:
We know that the correlation coefficient 'r' measures the strength and direction of a linear relationship between two variables on a scatterplot.
Since the values of 'r' between 0 and 0.3 (0 and -0.3) indicate a weak positive (negative) linear relationship .
Therefore, the phrase best describes a scatter plot in which the variables are correlated with r = 0.17 is "weak positive association".