Pearson's correlation coefficient when applied to a population is commonly represented by the Greek letter ρ (rho) and may be referred to as the population correlation coefficient or the population Pearson correlation coefficient. The formula for ρ is:
where, is the covariance, is the standard deviation of , is the mean of , and is the expectation.
适合计算机运行的公式:Alternative formulae for the sample Pearson correlation coefficient are also available:
The above formula suggests a convenient single-pass algorithm for calculating sample correlations, but, depending on the numbers involved, it can sometimes benumerically unstable.
Spearman's rank correlation coefficient
For a sample of size n, the n raw scores are converted to ranks , and ρ is computed from:
where , is the difference between ranks
示例[编辑]
在此例中,我们要使用下表所给出的原始数据计算一个人的 智商和其每周花在 电视上的小时数的相关性。
智商, | 每周花在电视上的小时数, |
106 | 7 |
86 | 0 |
100 | 27 |
101 | 50 |
99 | 28 |
103 | 29 |
97 | 20 |
113 | 12 |
112 | 6 |
110 | 17 |
首先,我们必须根据以下步骤计算出 ,如下表所示。
- 排列第一列数据 ()。 创建新列 并赋以等级值 1,2,3,...n。
- 然后,排列第二列数据 (). 创建第四列 并相似地赋以等级值 1,2,3,...n。
- 创建第五列 保存两个等级列的差值 ( 和 ).
- 创建最后一列 保存 的平方.
智商, | 每周花在电视上的小时数, | 等级 | 等级 | ||
86 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
97 | 20 | 2 | 6 | −4 | 16 |
99 | 28 | 3 | 8 | −5 | 25 |
100 | 27 | 4 | 7 | −3 | 9 |
101 | 50 | 5 | 10 | −5 | 25 |
103 | 29 | 6 | 9 | −3 | 9 |
106 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 16 |
110 | 17 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 9 |
112 | 6 | 9 | 2 | 7 | 49 |
113 | 12 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 36 |
根据 计算 。 样本容量n为 10。 将这些值带入方程
得 ρ = −0.175757575...