Question

What does a negative correlation coefficient mean about a scatter plot of the data?

Answer 1

A negative correlation means that there is an inverse relationship between two variables.

Explanation:

A negative correlation means that there is an inverse relationship between two variables.

This means that when one variable decreases, the other variable increases. The reverse is also true as well as when one variable increases and the other decreases.

However, it depends on the exact value of correlation that shows the strength of this inverse relationship between the two variable. The stronger relation exists when an increase / decrease in a variable always leads to decrease / increase in other variable and in such a situation, correlation is close to `-1`.

But if correlation is negative but towards `0`, it means weaker correlation and an increase / decrease in one variable may not always lead to decrease / increase in other variable.