The direction of the relationship can be positive, negative, or neither: A positive (or increasing) relationship means that an increase in one of the variables is associated with an increase in the ot...The direction of the relationship can be positive, negative, or neither: A positive (or increasing) relationship means that an increase in one of the variables is associated with an increase in the other. The strength of the relationship is a description of how closely the data follow the form of the relationship. In the bottom scatterplot, the data points also follow a linear pattern, but the points are not as close to the line.
