Comments on: A Plain-English Explanation of Correlation

By: Allen

Allen — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 22:19:30 +0000

Great post, Richard! Your wife sounds like mine

By: Stacy

Stacy — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:04:34 +0000

Thanks Richard! I’ll be using this in PSY 3711. Very cool!

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 05:42:37 +0000

Brilliant! I’ve actually bookmarked this now…

By: Richard N. Landers

Richard N. Landers — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:02:06 +0000

That’s odd… It should be updated! You might need to Ctrl-Refresh to load background items, depending on what browser you’re using.

By: George A Guajardo

George A Guajardo — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:07:12 +0000

I have refreshed, but I don’t see the red line you mentioned.

By: Richard N. Landers

Richard N. Landers — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:39:33 +0000

Well, my wife tells me it’s a problem that I find work to be a good use of my free time. She’s probably right!

But anyway – a bright red regression line has now been added (you may need to refresh the page).

On your previous point – yes – I agree re: managers. But this is something the world needs to know!!

By: George A Guajardo

George A Guajardo — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:34:28 +0000

On a Friday night? you must be about as cool as me =)

By: Richard N. Landers

Richard N. Landers — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:50:52 +0000

I did think about that, but ran out of time to integrate it by the time I wanted to put this post online. Maybe I will take a crack at implementing it tonight…

By: George A Guajardo

George A Guajardo — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:17:25 +0000

I tend towards the simpler explanation. Answering the question completely tends to generate more questions than the manager really wants answered.

I find that limiting myself to the question’s intent works pretty well; though people still regard me as some sort of magician…

By the way, that flash application is a great explanatory tool. Have you though about adding a “best fitting line” to represent the relationship? This might help people make the connection between correlation and linear relationships.

By: Richard N. Landers

Richard N. Landers — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:06:00 +0000

The problem that I get when explaining it that briefly is people getting this question wrong:

Which of these is the strongest correlation? a) .3 b) -.7

So as a result, I try to emphasize the difference between magnitude and direction. Plus I think having the visual (the Flash program I wrote above) helps a great deal.

I will admit however that if I was trying to explain this a manager who only wanted to learn what he absolutely had to, my explanation would probably be a bit closer to yours!