Guess the correlation

[ME/CFS Skeptic]

Here's a fun, stupid game: guess the correlation.
http://guessthecorrelation.com/

A random scatterplot is given and you have to guess the correlation coefficient (a number between 0 and 1 that indicates the strength of relationship between the two variables).

My high score is 155 points Who can do better?

 

[ME/CFS Skeptic]

 

[Trish]

That was fun. My score improved from 33 to 104 on my first 2 goes.

 

[Dolphin]

My scores though didn't increase monotonically

108
1 (oops!)
175

 

[Woolie]

Haha, nice way of learning what the patterns look like in terms of numbers. Its a really good demonstration of how one or two outliers can really skew the value of r.

I couldn't get the game to stop, so I just quit out after a while.

 

[Trish]

It stops when you lose all 3 hearts by getting 3 badly wrong in quick succession.
As well as showing the effect of outliers, I think it also illustrates how similar the patterns look in the bottom half of the range, so a correlation of 0.4 looks to me very much like a correlation of 0.1. And to me 0.4 often looks much like 0.6. This probably partly indicates that my eye naturally eliminates outliers and focuses on the mass in the middle, and that the formula gives too much weight to outliers, or it could suggest that the eye deceives and I need the formula to help spot subtle trends.

My inclination is to the former. If I can't see a definite trend visually in the whole mass of data, not just a few outliers, then in the real world there probably isn't one of clinical significance, and if a correlation is marginally statistically significant and a correlation is being claimed, then perhaps the data is being over interpreted to suit the researcher's purposes.

 

[ME/CFS Skeptic]

Evelien and I wanted to get 1000 points but we didn't make it.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Looking at the high scores (on the site), I think some people are testing algorithms... No way any real person would have that sort of patience.

 

[Keela Too]

Oh my! I thought I would be better at this game!

[Edit to add: Okay, bit of practice, and I’ve now managed 204. Ho hum!]

 

[TiredSam]

Rubbish game.

 

[Jaybee00]

“Nearly impossible” correlation here. Note—health but not MECFS related.