The Correlation Coefficient: An Overview

Correlation and regression are different, but not mutually exclusive, techniques. Roughly, regression is used for prediction (which does not extrapolate beyond the data used in the analysis) whereas correlation is used to determine the degree of association. There situations in which the x variable is not fixed or readily chosen by the experimenter, but instead is a random covariate to the y variable. This paper shows the relationships between the coefficient of determination, the multiple correlation coefficient, the covariance, the correlation coefficient and the coefficient of alienation, for the case of two related variables x and y. It discusses the uses of the correlation coefficient r, either as a way…