SOAN 2120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Dependent And Independent Variables, List Of Statistical Packages, Grounded Theory

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 2120
• Professor: D Walters

Document Summary

Scatter plots play an important role when exploring the relationship between two quantitative variables. They allow us to identify problem cases, the form of the relationship (whether it is linear or not) and have a preliminary estimate of the strength of the relationship. Only when the relationship is linear does it make sense to use the correlation coefficient (-1-1 only) The correlation coefficient is a good summary measure of the direction and strength of a linear relationship. It ranges from -1 (perfect negative linear relationship) to 1 (perfect positive linear relationship) and 0 means there is no linear relationship. The correlation coefficient does not tell us the slope of the line. Lies outside the general cluster or pattern of dots that make up the relationship. Outliers can wreak havoc on your evidence- contradict your theory. We infer a casual relationship based on our understanding of the temporal relationship between the variables.