Exploring associations between variables
At first glance, you may wonder what the point of finding relationships between variables is. The ability to understand the behavior of a pair of variables and to identify a pattern in their behavior helps business owners identify key factors that can skew certain indicators of business health in their favor.
Knowing the pattern that binds the trend of two variables gives you the power to predict one of them with some certainty by knowing the other. So, knowing the tools to uncover these patterns gives you a kind of analytical superpower that is always attractive to business owners.
In general, two variables are associated if the values of one are somehow related to the values of the other. If you can somehow measure the extent of the association between two variables, it is called a correlation. The concept of correlation is directly applicable in a case where the two variables are numerical. Let’s see how.
