Question

1. For each of 200 randomly selected cities, Gary recorded the number of churches

in the city (x) and the number of homicides in the past decade (y). He calculated
the linear correlation coefficient and was surprised to find a strong positive linear
correlation for the two variables. Does this suggest that building new churches
causes an increase in the number of homicides? Why do you think that a strong
positive linear correlation coefficient was obtained? Explain your answer with
reference to the term lurking variable.

Answer 1

Kindly check explanation

Explanation:

When certain variables are examined, there seems to be a sort of spurious relatuoshipnornassocuation between the two variables, this is evident in the relationship between churches and the number of homicide, when a strong positive correlation is observed between number of churches and number of homicides, this relationship is most likely to be due to the effect of a lurking or third variable which creeped into our analysis, a factor which has a posithe correlation on both number of churches and homicide level, Number of homicide and number of churches could have been correlated by the lncreasing population which may lead to overcrowding and competition Hence increasing rate of homicide, similarly, with high rise in population, the growth of church to accommodate the populees will also creep in.