A student computes the correlation between two variables in a spreedsheet and finds r= 0.06.Is there a relationship between the variables?
Since it is so close to r = .00, I would say no.
To determine if there is a relationship between two variables based on the correlation coefficient, you need to assess its strength and establish a threshold for significance.
In this case, the correlation coefficient (r) is 0.06. The correlation coefficient ranges between -1 and 1, where a positive value indicates a positive relationship (direct correlation), a negative value indicates a negative relationship (inverse correlation), and 0 indicates no linear relationship.
However, the strength of the relationship is also important. Normally, correlations below 0.3 are considered weak, correlations between 0.3 and 0.7 are moderate, and correlations above 0.7 are strong.
Since the correlation coefficient in this case is only 0.06, it is considered very weak. This suggests there is little to no linear relationship between the variables. However, it's important to note that a weak correlation does not necessarily mean there is no relationship at all, as there could still be other types of relationships not captured by the correlation coefficient.
To interpret the relationship between the variables further, it is also helpful to consider other statistical measures and the context of the data.