Shanon Gunn

Math 1040 – 8:30 a.m.

Correlation and Regression

“Can height be used to predict the number of candies that will be in the bag of Skittles you purchase?”

• I do not think that there will be any correlation between a students height and the number of
candies in the bag that they purchased because height varies greatly from person to person, and
cannot determine how many candies are in a bag of Skittles.
• The explanatory variable would be the student’s height. The response variable would be the
number of candies in the bag, since it is the variable of interest in the study.

Simple linear regression results:

Dependent Variable: Total

Independent Variable: Height
Total = 63.116326 - 0.0606596 Height
Sample size: 86
R (correlation coefficient) = -0.093031197
R-sq = 0.0086548036
Estimate of error standard deviation: 2.5639763

Parameter estimates:

Parameter Estimate Std. Err. Alternative DF T-Stat P-value

Intercept 63.116326 4.6385057 ≠ 0 84 13.607039 <0.0001
Slope -0.0606596 0.070834323 ≠ 0 84 -0.85635887 0.3942

Analysis of variance table for regression model:

Source DF SS MS F-stat P-value

Model 1 4.8210275 4.8210275 0.73335051 0.3942
Error 84 552.21386 6.5739745
Total 85 557.03488
• Since the value of the correlation coefficient, r, is -.093 and is close to 0, this indicates there
is little or no evidence of a linear relationship. Since the absolute value of r, .093, is less than
the critical value of .361 used for studies where n>30, we can determine that no linear
relation exists. This agrees with my hypothesis that no relationship would exist between a
student’s height and the number of candies in the bag they purchased.
• The regression equation is: ŷ =-0.061x+63.116
Using my height, ŷ= -.061(67)+63.116 ŷ =59.029
It would not be appropriate to use this equation to predict the number of candies in the
next bag I purchase because the correlation coefficient indicated that there was no linear
relation between the response and the explanatory variables. You should use the mean of
the response variable, ӯ, which would be 59.151.
• The value for R² is .00865. R² is the proportion of variation in the response variable that is
explained by the regression line. This means that .865% of the variation in number of
candies per bag is explained by the least squares regression line.
• If there were a significant relationship between height and number of candies per bag, it
would not be appropriate to predict the number of candies per bag purchased by Yao Ming,
since his height, 90 inches, is outside the scope of the original model.
• Values for systematic sample

Height # of
candies
63.5 55
60 57
62 58
67.2 59
66 59
62.5 60
60 61
68 61
68 64

• The correlation coefficient for the systematic sample of data values is r=.445. Since there
were 9 values included in the sample, the critical value is .666. Since the absolute value of r
is .445 and is below the critical value, we can determine that no linear relation exists for the
smaller data set.
• The regression equation is: ŷ=.356(x)+36.510.