Try it on paper first. A hint, the key idea and the worked solution are here when you need them.
A health clinic records the heights, in centimetres, and masses, in kilograms, of six teenagers. The heights are and the masses are . A foreign visitor wants the data in metres for the height and in grams for the mass. The clinic wonders how this change of units affects the correlation coefficient and the slope of the line of best fit. Use the line of mass on height. Find for the original units, the slope in kilograms per centimetre, and then the slope in grams per metre. Say what happens to after the change.
and . From totals, the numerator is . The denominator has the factors and under one root. is unchanged by a change of units, and for ranks .
Have you tried it?
Work it out on paper first. It is fine to get stuck or make a mistake: that is how we learn. When you are ready, go through the solution one step at a time, and check each step against your own.
Step 1. The correlation. The mean height is and the mean mass is . The sums give .
Step 2. The slope. .
Step 3. The new units. Heights in metres are of the old numbers and masses in grams are times the old numbers. A change in height of metre is centimetres, which goes with . So the slope is with the unrounded value.
Step 4. What happens to . Both changes multiply by positive numbers, so stays .
Answer: in both sets of units. The slope is , which is .
Watch out. The slope changes with the units, because it carries them. The correlation coefficient does not.
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