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JosephFrank
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Joined: June 13th, 2003, 3:41 pm

covariance vs correlation

January 3rd, 2005, 7:38 pm

Hello,I am wondering if someone could explain to me exactly what is the difference between correlation and covariance. somehow i feel confused about the concepts. I feel they are interwind
 
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exotiq
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Joined: October 13th, 2003, 3:45 pm

covariance vs correlation

January 3rd, 2005, 8:07 pm

correlation(x,y) = covariance(x,y)/(stdev(x)*stdev(y)) . Basically correlation is scaled to be a pure indicator of how strong the relationship is between two random variables on a scale of -1 to 1, without the magnitude of the variance of each variable affecting the number. HTH...
 
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PutorCall
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Joined: November 27th, 2002, 1:45 am

covariance vs correlation

January 7th, 2005, 12:27 am

Correlation is dimensionless while covariance has units given by the product of the dimensions of the two random variables.It also helps to think of correlation as the cosine of an angle between two vectors normalized to have unit length.
 
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hamb
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Joined: December 29th, 2004, 3:12 pm

covariance vs correlation

January 7th, 2005, 2:07 am

Make it simple, correlation is the standardized covariance.
 
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mensa0
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Joined: January 20th, 2004, 8:56 am

covariance vs correlation

January 7th, 2005, 7:32 am

Yes - correlation is the standardized covariance and is dimensionless. It can be shown that the product of two variables standard deviations can never be greater than their covariance (I had to prove this on a stat exam once.) Thus, the correlation coefficient will always lie between -1 and +1, inclusive, with the sign determined by the sign of the covariance.Mike
 
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JamesH83
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Joined: June 25th, 2003, 11:38 pm

covariance vs correlation

January 7th, 2005, 8:51 am

mensa, could you outline the proof?
 
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afelton
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Joined: April 4th, 2004, 8:57 pm

covariance vs correlation

January 7th, 2005, 1:56 pm

The correlation is the covariance divided by the product of the variances. It is always -1<corr<-1 because of Cauchy's Inequality.
 
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afelton
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Joined: April 4th, 2004, 8:57 pm

covariance vs correlation

January 7th, 2005, 2:01 pm

Actually, that's not exactly the definition of correlation, Exotiq has it right above, sorry, but Cauchy's Inequality is still the key to the proof.
 
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JamesH83
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Joined: June 25th, 2003, 11:38 pm

covariance vs correlation

January 7th, 2005, 6:35 pm

that makes sense, thanks afelton