Question

A scatter plot has a correlation coefficient of -0.159. What does this suggest about the relationship between the two variables?

Answer 1

Weak negative correlation.

Answer 2

R = -0.159 is the correlation coefficient

the value of r is closer to 0 than it is to -1, so the data is very weakly linear associated. The scatter plot points are too spread out for one single line to be close to them all. A different curve (such as a parabola) may be a better fit.

The fact that r is negative suggests that there is negative association. What this means is that as x goes up, y goes down. As you move from left to right, you go downhill. The regression line will have a negative slope.