Another measure of the quality of fit is the correlation coefficient, r
2. To calculate the correlation coefficient, square the total of the (x-
)(y-
) column, and divide by the total of the (x-
)
2 and the total of the (y-
)
2 column. The formula is:
r
2 equals 1 if the data all lie exactly along a straight line, and r
2 equals 0 if the data are not correlated. Values between 1 and 0 indicate that the data have some linear relationship, but also have some scatter. Data with an r
2 of above .8 are considered strongly correlated.
