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Example of direction in scatterplots

There are two graphs. One shows the relationship between study time and test grades. Do you get better grades if you study more? The other graph shows the relationship between shoe size and grades. Do you get better grades if you wear larger shoes? Created by Sal Khan.

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Video transcript

The graphs below show the test grades of the students in Dexter's class. The first graph shows the relationship between test grades and the amount of time the students spent studying. So this is study time on this axis and this is the test grade on this axis. And the second graph shows the relationship between test grades and shoes size. So shoe size on this axis and then test grade. Choose the best description of the relationship between the graphs. So first, before looking at the explanations, let's look at the actual graphs. So this one on the left right over here, it looks like there is a positive linear relationship right over here. I could almost fit a line that would go just like that. And it makes sense that there would be, that the more time that you spend studying, the better score that you would get. Now for a certain amount of time studying, some people might do better than others, but it does seem like there's this relationship. Here it doesn't seem like there's really much of a relationship. You see the shoe sizes, for a given shoe size, some people do not so well and some people do very well. Someone with a size 10 and 1/2, it looks like, someone it looks like they flunked the exam. Someone else, looks like they got A minus or a B plus on the exam. And it really would be hard to somehow fit a line here. No matter how you draw a line, these dots don't seem to form a trend. So let's see which of these choices apply. There's a negative linear relationship between study time and score. No, that's not true. It looks like there's a positive linear relationship. The more you study, the better your score would be. A negative linear relationship would trend downwards like that. There is a non-linear relationship between study time and score and a negative linear relationship between shoe size and score. Well that doesn't seem right either. A non-linear relationship, it would not be easy to fit a line to it. And this one seems like a line would be very reasonable. And it doesn't seem like there's any type of relationship between shoe size and score. So I wouldn't pick this one either. There's a positive linear relationship between study time and score. That's right. And no relationship between shoe size and score. Well, I'm going to go with that one. Both graphs show positive linear trends of approximately equal strength. No, not at all. This one doesn't show a linear relationship of really any strength.