MATLAB: I need to determine the pearson product moment correlation coefficient between the variables in this data set.

biomechanicscoefficientcorrcorrcoefhelpkinesiologymasspearsonphysiologyrhostudent

This is my first semester using MatLab, for a biomechanics class I need for my M.S. in Kinesiology. I've read through the corr and corrcoef pages on the Mathworks support page, as well as a few related questions. I'm puzzled because on the page it uses randn as in random variables, but I know what the variables are that I need to use, for example height (VarName 1) and mass (VarName2). Because they're not random, I don't know why I would use that? If anyone could help me out or point me in the direction of a page or question asked by a user previously that would be great!
VarName1 VarName2 VarName3
________ ________ ________
156.2 52.8 17.28
162.8 70.4 20.55
167 71.5 17.81
159.2 58.5 18.03
167.5 51.7 12.1
165.8 65.1 16.89
166.1 54.8 9.74
173.2 76.8 20.83
176.9 61 16.97
172 85.1 25.66
163.6 57.7 25.33
186.5 88.9 20.79
180.2 85.7 22.28
161.6 40.8 6.06
162 38.5 5.71
177.2 80 23.54
186.8 97.2 20.82
157 46.4 1
165 52.7 3
184 60.3 8
176 63.2 6.9
163 44 3.9
168 56.3 6.5
172 64.7 9.8
168 69.7 12.6
183 70.6 9.6
168.5 53.8 6.1
172 73.5 15.9
169 62 3.2

Best Answer

randn was used to generate an example, NOT to compute a correllation coefficient. But if they had no example data, then what example could they offer?
You already have your data, so you have no need for randn, at least not now. You probably will in the future. Anyway, just use corr or corrcoef as you wish.
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