Cristian M. answered • 08/08/20
MS Statistics Graduate with 5+ Years of Tutoring Experience
Question: Let A be the area of the floor (in square feet) of a room and let N be the number of tables that you comfortably fit into the room. Identify the explanatory variable and the response variable.
Answer: The explanatory variable (or independent variable) is the one we can actually manipulate or control. The response variable (or dependent variable) depends on what we do with the explanatory variable. We don't have control over it, and we only see what happens with it in experimentation. So let's think: If we have more flooring, we will be able to accommodate more tables. If we have less flooring, we will not be able to accommodate a lot of tables. It seems that we have more control over flooring than we do tables, and the number of tables seems to depend on how much flooring there is.
A (for floor area) is the explanatory variable, and N (for number of tables) is the response variable.
