Statistical Tests Can Provide More

¶ … statistical tests can provide more information than a single one, allowing for more meaningful assessments of a situation. This interaction of two statistical tests (as described below) demonstrates that in this scenario younger women are by far the most likely to be the best employees for this call center.

The Pearson r provides an answer to the question of whether or not two variables are related to each other. More than simply establishing whether a relationship exists or not, Pearson r determines how strong this relationship is and whether it is a direct or inverse relationship. In a direct relationship, if one variable goes up than so does another (or others).

For example, in general as an individual's height goes up, so does his/or her weight. In an inverse relationship, as one variable goes up another one goes down. An example of this would be: The fewer workers are assigned to construct a building the longer it will take to construct the building. Both of these relationships cited here make intuitive sense to us. We may never have considered them to be a part of the world of statistics, but we understand how different factors can be related either directly or inversely.

Pearson r can tell us how strong the relationship is between two variables. The closer to 1, the stronger the relationship is and the closer to 0 the weaker the relationship is. If the Pearson r value is positive, the relationship is direct, and if negative, the relationship is inverse. In our hypothetical case study, the r value is negative and thus the older a worker gets the less engagement they demonstrate with the customers.