## 5.1 Scatter Plots

A scatter plot is a convenient way to visually compare two numerical variables. For example, consider again the income per person variable (based on data from ) and suppose this time, we are interested in visualising the relationship between this and the Happiness Index. Income per person can be represented along the horizontal $$x$$ axis and happiness along the vertical $$y$$ axis. Then, if we placed one point on the graph for each country located at the country's income per person on the $$x$$ axis and happiness index on the $$y$$ axis, this would be a scatter plot of the two variables:

Considering the above scatter plot, what observations can you make about the relationship between average income per person and average happiness score based on this data?

Scatter plots are also a helpful way for us to understand correlation. For example, consider the below scatterplots, and their associated correlations:

### References

Gapminder.org. 2021. “Free Data from World Bank via Gapminder.org, CC-BY License.” 2021. https://www.gapminder.org/data/.