Scatter Plot: Effect of an Outlier
Use the following resources to understand how an outlier affects the correlation between two data-sets.
Questions:
Does the line of best fit pass through all the points in the scatter plot?
Does the line of best fit have to go through any of the points in the scatter plot?
Instructions:
There are 8 points on the screen.
Can you move the points so that seven of them are on one side of the line of best fit and one of them is on the other side?
Does a line of best fit have to have half the points on each side of it?
Click on the check box to include/exclude the outlier from the data-set.
What effect does the outlier have on
(i)the correlation coefficient and
(ii)the line of best fit
