Scatterplot

The scatterplot is a graphical technique that is often used to explore data to get an initial impression of the relationship between two variables. It is an important component of descriptive epidemiology and can be helpful in providing clues as to where further exploration of the data may be valuable. It gives a sense of the variability in the data and points to unusual observations. The scatterplot is most frequently used when both the variables of interest are continuous.

To create a scatterplot, the value of the y variable, the dependent variable, is plotted on the y axis against the corresponding value of the x variable, the independent variable, which is plotted on the x axis. This is done for each data point. The resulting plot ...