Draw and interpret scatter plots
Figure 1. A scatter plot of age and final exam score variables
Notice this scatter plot does not indicate a linear relationship. The points do not appear to follow a trend. In other words, there does not appear to be a relationship between the age of the student and the score on the final exam.
Example 1: Using a Scatter Plot to Investigate Cricket Chirps
The table below shows the number of cricket chirps in 15 seconds, for several different air temperatures, in degrees Fahrenheit.[footnote]Selected data from http://classic.globe.gov/fsl/scientistsblog/2007/10/. Retrieved Aug 3, 2010[/footnote] Plot this data, and determine whether the data appears to be linearly related.
Chirps | 44 | 35 | 20.4 | 33 | 31 | 35 | 18.5 | 37 | 26 |
Temperature | 80.5 | 70.5 | 57 | 66 | 68 | 72 | 52 | 73.5 | 53 |
Solution
Plotting this data suggests that there may be a trend. We can see from the trend in the data that the number of chirps increases as the temperature increases. The trend appears to be roughly linear, though certainly not perfectly so.Figure 2
Licenses & Attributions
CC licensed content, Shared previously
- Precalculus. Provided by: OpenStax Authored by: Jay Abramson, et al.. Located at: https://openstax.org/books/precalculus/pages/1-introduction-to-functions. License: CC BY: Attribution. License terms: Download For Free at : http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]..