degree s in celsius to the number of ice cream sold per day. See description below.

Question

Orion is working with a data set that compares the outside temperature in degrees Celsius to the number of gallons of ice cream sold per day in a local grocery store. His data has a line of best fit modeled by the function f (x)=3x + 4. He determines that when the temperature is 25 degrees Celsius the store should sell about 79 gallons of ice cream. The correlation coefficient of the data is 0.39, Explain how accurate Orion can expect this prediction to be.

Answer 1

A correlation coefficient of 1 is the highest value possible and represents the strongest correlation, However, this value is rarely ever reached. Given Orion's value of 0.39, his data represents a reasonable way to predict how many gallons of ice cream he will sell based on the temperature.

However, there are some caveats with his dataset. One variable that is not taken into consideration is the time of year. It is logical to expect that more ice cream will be sold in the summer months verses the winter months. It is logical to expect that more gallons will be sold when schools are not in session compared to when they are in session. The other variable is the day he is selling. Again, with different social factors, there will be some variability with Orion's business on a Monday verses a Saturday.

With the above factors, and many more, to consider, it is reasonable to assume that Orion's dataset is not as accurate as it could be, even though is appears to show a relatively strong correlation between temperature and gallons of ice cream sold.