1
$\begingroup$

I am a high school student doing a report for my environmental science course, IB diploma.

My question is about how to find the correlation between two data sets.

My question of interest is whether a city's population density affects the city's air quality, measured in PM 25.

Though I have the research question, I don't really know how to approach it. I am not familiar with statistic analysis and don't know which tool and how I would use to try to answer my question in mind.

I plan to choose around 10 cities and gather the two values for each city from a particular year, from there I guess I can do a graph with the independent value (population density) on x-axis and dependent (air quality measured by PM 25) on the y-axis. Please help me and guide me how I would do from there and whether my choice of the range of data is wise, if not, how can I do?

Thanks a lot!

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ The data may not lie on an approximate straight line, in which case a single correlation value might be misleading. Before deciding on how to model the data, visually inspect a scatterplot of all data points to determine if a straight line roughly models the relationship sufficiently that it would be close to what is shown on the scatterplot. A simple correlation value might indeed give a good understanding of the relationship, but I advise you to plot first. BTW, I also went to an advanced academic high school and will be glad to help in the project - as will many people you find here. $\endgroup$
    – James Phillips
    Commented Aug 12, 2019 at 16:00

0

Reset to default

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.