Trend Lines (Line of Best Fit)

Front

What is a trend line?

Back

A trend line, or line of best fit, is a straight line that best represents the data on a scatter plot, showing the general direction of the data points.

Front

What does a positive correlation indicate in a scatter plot?

Back

A positive correlation indicates that as one variable increases, the other variable also increases.

Front

What does a negative correlation indicate in a scatter plot?

Back

A negative correlation indicates that as one variable increases, the other variable decreases.

Front

What is the purpose of a line of best fit?

Back

The purpose of a line of best fit is to summarize the relationship between two variables and make predictions based on the data.

Front

How do you determine the line of best fit visually?

Back

The line of best fit is determined visually by drawing a line that has approximately equal numbers of points above and below it.

Front

What is the equation of a line in slope-intercept form?

Back

Front

What does the slope of a line represent?

Back

The slope of a line represents the rate of change between the two variables; it indicates how much one variable changes for a unit change in the other variable.

Front

What is the y-intercept of a line?

Back

Front

How can you tell if a line is a good line of best fit?

Back

A good line of best fit minimizes the distance between itself and all the data points, ideally having an equal number of points above and below the line.

Front

What does it mean if there is no correlation in a scatter plot?

Back

No correlation means that there is no apparent relationship between the two variables; changes in one variable do not predict changes in the other.