Question

Over a period of years, a certain town observed that the correlation between x, the number of people attending churches, and y, the number of people in the city jail, was r = 0.90. Does going to church cause people to go to jail? Explain why or why not.

Answer 1

The correlation coefficient, r^2, is a measure of how well your data fits a line, if it's done through linear regression. The higher the r^2, the more reliable your data is. Meaning, it follows a trend you compared it with. This does not tell, however, the relationship between the variables. It only tells that there is a clear trend of your data.