scatter diagrams

Cards (11)

  • Health is the state of physical and mental well-being, with factors working together and affecting physical and mental health.
  • A disease is a disorder that affects an organism's body, organs, tissues or cells.
  • Scatter diagrams look at a possible correlation between two sets of data, such that when one set changes, you would expect the other set to change as well.
  • A variable can change or may take on different values.
  • Large amounts of data are usually recorded to investigate trends, and scatter graphs are particularly useful for analysing this kind of data.
  • Scatter graphs enable correlations between disease and lifestyle choices, and correlations between disease and environmental or industrial conditions, such as possible effects of pesticides, industrial chemicals, etc.
  • Scatter graphs are also a good way of looking at trends across different countries.
  • The scatter graph below uses data from a landmark scientific paper of 1975, where Ken Carroll investigated women eating different amounts of animal fat and deaths from breast cancer.
  • Each data point in the scatter graph represents a piece of data from a different country.
  • The data shows a clear trend between animal fat intake and death rates from breast cancer.
  • If a scatter graph shows a correlation between two sets of data, a line of best fit can be added to illustrate the trend.