Correlation
Correlation
Concept of Correlation
• “Correlation analysis contributes to the understanding of economic behaviors, aids in
locating the critically important variables on which others depend, may reveal to the
economist the connections by which disturbances spread and suggest to him the paths
through which stabilizing forces may become effective.”—W.A. Neiswanger
• According to L.R. Connor, “If two or more quantities vary in sympathy so that movements
in one tend to be accompanied by corresponding movements in others, then they are said to
be correlated.”
• In the words of Croxton and Cowden, “When the relationship is of a quantitative nature,
the appropriate statistical tool for discovering and measuring the relationship and expressing
it in a brief formula is known as correlation.”
• Correlation refers to the statistical relationship between the two entities. It measures the
extent to which two variables are linearly related. For example, the height and weight of a
person are related, and taller people tend to be heavier than shorter people.
• Correlation is a statistical measure that expresses the extent to which two variables
are linearly related (meaning they change together at a constant rate).
• There are instances in real-world situations where distributions have two variables
like data related to income and expenditure, prices and demand, height and weight,
etc. The distribution with two variables is referred to as bivariate distribution.
• Correlations with a unit-free measure called the correlation coefficient which ranges
from -1 to +1 and is denoted by r. Statistical significance is indicated with a p-value.
Therefore, correlations are typically written with two key numbers: r = and p
Types of Correlation
• A Positive correlation is a relationship between two variables in which both
variables move in the same direction. Therefore, when one variable increases as the
other variable increases or one variable decreases while the other decreases. For
example, Relationship between the price and supply of commodity products,
income and expenditure, price of Crude Oil on Price of Price of Petro-chemcials ,
etc.
• A negative correlation is a relationship between two variables in which an increase in
one variable is associated with a decrease in the other. For example, the relationship
between the price and demand, temperature and sale of woolen garments, etc.
• Zero Correlation: If there is no relation between two series
or variables, it is said to have zero or no correlation. It means
that if one variable changes and it does not have any impact
on the other variable, then there is a lack of correlation
between them. In such cases, the Coefficient of Correlation
will be 0.
Methods of Correlation
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