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Correlation coefficientThe visual inspection of a scatterplot gives the researcher useful information about the sample. But researchers often want more precise information, so they next calculate the correlation coefficient, which is even more useful.The correlation coefficient is a statistic (a number) which indicates the strength of the association between the two variables. It can take values ranging from +1.0 (the strongest possible positive correlation) through 0.0 (no correlation at all) to -1.0 (the strongest negative correlation). The lowercase letter r is used as a symbol for the correlation coefficient. |