[R] How to interpret Spearman Correlation

David Winsemius dwinsemius at comcast.net
Wed Nov 2 01:34:21 CET 2011


Shahab;

You would be well advised not to seek private tutoring from someone on the Internet who tells you that a p-value of 0.008736 is "not significant".



On Nov 1, 2011, at 8:09 PM, Raphael Saldanha <saldanha.plangeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Shahab,
> 
> This test shows that there is some positive statistical correlation, BUT
> the p-value of the test - this is, the level of significance - shows that
> the correlation is not statistically significant at 95% confidence level.
> So, the correlation may be equal to zero.
> 
> To understand this concepts in a good way, you need to be secure about
> variance and hypothesis test.
> 
> I can help you more if you need. Send me a direct mail (this list is for
> doubts about R, not conceptual statistics). I will be happy to help you
> with Statistics.
> 
> My e-mail: saldanha.plangeo at gmail.com
> 
> On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 8:58 PM, shahab <shahab.mokari at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I am not really familiar with Correlation foundations, although I read
>> a lot. So maybe if someone kindly help me to interpret the following
>> results.
>> I had the following R commands:
>> 
>> correlation <-cor( vector_CitationProximity , vector_Impact, method =
>> "spearman", use="na.or.complete")
>> cor_test<-cor.test(vector_CitationProximity, vector_Impact,
>> method="spearman")
>> 
>> and the results are:
>> "correlation"
>> Correlation =  0.04715686
>> 
>> "cor_test"
>> Spearman's rank correlation rho
>> 
>> data:  vector_CitationProximity and vector_Impact
>> S = 5581032104, p-value = 0.008736
>> alternative hypothesis: true rho is not equal to 0
>> sample estimates:
>>      rho
>> 0.04582115
>> 
>> 
>> So apparently, there is positive correlation between two given
>> variables since Correlation =  0.04715686  > 0
>> However I couldn't interpret the significance ?' what does "rho" say?
>> Is there any simple sample that I can read and try to understand? I am
>> do confused in understanding how significance can be interpreted.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> /Shahab
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Atenciosamente,
> 
> Raphael Saldanha
> saldanha.plangeo at gmail.com
> 
>    [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.



More information about the R-help mailing list