# Easy test to see if two columns of numbers are correlated?

I have a simple set of data that looks like

key     thingID     countOfThing   NumberBadThingsHappen
1       xxx         64             200
2       xxx         20             10


What are some applicable tests to see if countOfThing and NumberBadThingsHappen share any type of relationship? The first two columns serve to uniquely identify the last two. I don't anticipate this being a panacea for any real analysis, just looking for a place to start. Feel free to edit I've tagged this incorrectly.

• I would suggest changing your strategy from testing to exploration. Start by summarizing and visualizing your data. A natural beginning to visualization (for the purposes of identifying relationships) is a scatterplot. (When you're still at the stage of wondering what type of relationship two variables might have, formal statistical tests give misleading results. Search the literature for "data snooping" and "data dredging".) – whuber Mar 27 '13 at 13:13
• One of the bad things about learning something on your own is, sometimes you don't know what things are called! Thanks :) – wootscootinboogie Mar 27 '13 at 13:16

Note there are different types of correlation (Pearson and Spearman), and just because Pearson $\rho=0$ doesn't mean there is no relationship (there are nice examples on wikipedia for this). Hence, as suggested in the comments, you should make a scatterplot using the two variables.