Question

What is the direction and strength of the association between the variable?

Answer 1

Answer: B) Strong Negative

The points do not all fall on the same straight line, but they come fairly close to one. This line is known as the line of best fit, aka the regression line. If a regression line has a negative slope, then we consider the data to have negative correlation. The closer the fit, the stronger the correlation.

Contrast this with points that are scattered more randomly about though may have some negative correlation (as x goes up, y goes down). In this scenario, we would have weak correlation. The correlation coefficient r will tell a better story about how strong or weak of a correlation there is. Unfortunately, without the actual numeric values, it's impossible to figure out the r value.