Report the correlation between gestation and longevity and comment on the strength and direction of the relationship. Interpret your findings in context.

Math/Physic/Economic/Statistic Problems

Click on the link corresponding to your statistical package to see instructions for completing the activity, and then answer the questions below.

Question 1: Report the correlation between gestation and longevity and comment on the strength and direction of the relationship. Interpret your findings in context.

Now return to the scatterplot that you created earlier. Notice that there is an outlier in both longevity (40 years) and gestation (645 days). Note: This outlier corresponds to the longevity and gestation period of the elephant.
What do you think will happen to the correlation if we remove this outlier?

Instructions
Click on the link corresponding to your statistical package to see instructions for completing the activity, and then answer the questions below.

Question 2:
Report the new value for the correlation between gestation and longevity and compare it to the value you found earlier when the outlier was included. What is it about this outlier that results in the fact that its inclusion in the data causes the correlation to increase? (Hint: look at the scatterplot.)

Comment
In the last activity, we saw an example where there was a positive linear relationship between the two variables, and including the outlier just “strengthened” it. Consider the hypothetical data displayed by the following scatterplot:
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