I've been trying to look for a question like this but I simply see positive correlation coefficients. I'm new to this so forgive me if I'm not really familiar with the terms.
I'm doing an analysis on the proportion of females in national parliament and mortality rate. I was expecting a negative correlation coefficient since the relationship is negative, however it came out positive in my regression data analytics from Excel. Did I do something wrong?
As you can see the R^2 = 0.7208 but the trend line is going down so I'm quite confused. I hope someone can clarify this for me, thank you!
Best Answer
The correlation coefficient is $r$. $R^2$ is the square of $r$, and it is of course always positive, regardless of the sign of $r$. Taking the square root gives that $r= \pm 0.8489$, and since the relationship is negative, you can conclude that $r = -0.8489$.