If the correlation between interest in statistics and being a fun date was -0.70, it would mean that:

If the correlation between interest in statistics and being a fun date was -0.70, it would mean that:

• A. There is a 30% chance that someone with an interest in statistics is a fun date.
• B. There is a strong positive relationship.
• C. The two variables are independent.
• D. The relationship explains all variance.

Answer: (A)

Correlation tells us how two variables vary together in direction and strength. A value of -0.70 shows a strong inverse relationship: as interest in statistics increases, being a “fun date” tends to decrease, and this pattern is fairly consistent across cases. This isn’t a statement about probability for a single person—correlation describes the pattern across many cases, not the likelihood for an individual. It also means they are not independent, since their scores move together in a systematic way. The amount of shared variance is given by r squared, which is about 0.49 here, so roughly 49% of the variance in one variable is associated with variance in the other, while about 51% is due to other factors or randomness. So the main takeaway is the strong negative relationship; interpreting it as a probability or as explaining all variance would be inaccurate.

Correlation tells us how two variables vary together in direction and strength. A value of -0.70 shows a strong inverse relationship: as interest in statistics increases, being a “fun date” tends to decrease, and this pattern is fairly consistent across cases. This isn’t a statement about probability for a single person—correlation describes the pattern across many cases, not the likelihood for an individual. It also means they are not independent, since their scores move together in a systematic way. The amount of shared variance is given by r squared, which is about 0.49 here, so roughly 49% of the variance in one variable is associated with variance in the other, while about 51% is due to other factors or randomness. So the main takeaway is the strong negative relationship; interpreting it as a probability or as explaining all variance would be inaccurate.