Question

Priya creates a scatter plot showing the relationship between the number of steps she takes and her heart rate. The correlation coefficient of the line of best fit is 0.88.Are they correlated? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

Correlation coefficient: statistical measure of the strength of the relationship between the relative movements of two variables.

• If a correlation coefficient has an exact value of one, it has a perfect positive relationship between the two variables

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• If a correlation coefficient has an exact value of minus one, there is a perfect negative relationship between the two variables.

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• Analysts in some fields of study do not consider correlations important until the value surpasses at least 0.8. However, a correlation coefficient with an absolute value of 0.9 or greater would represent a very strong relationship.

Thus, they have a weak correlation.