Correlation and Dependence

Correlation and dependence. Jump to navigation Jump to search Several sets of (x, y) points, with the Pearson correlation coefficient of x and y for each set. The correlation reflects the noisiness and direction of a linear relationship (top row), but not the slope of that relationship (middle), nor many aspects of nonlinear relationships (bottom). N.B.: the figure in the center has a slope of ...

In statistics, dependence or association is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Correlation is any of a broad class of statistical relationships involving dependence, though in common usage it most often refers to how close two variables are to having a linear relationship with each other. Familiar examples of dependent phenomena ...