Question

Consider that in the United States, education levels (here measured as the percent of residents who’ve graduated high school) are thought to influence levels of obesity. There are a number of possible mechanisms for this relationship. At the individual level, education increases the amount of knowledge people have, including knowledge about health risks and healthy lifestyle choices. Education can also be related to obesity through economic status, as higher levels of education are associated with higher incomes, which in turn enables access to healthcare, healthier foods, and equipment or space for exercising. At the community level, neighborhoods with higher education levels are likewise more likely to have convenient access to healthcare institutions, places to get healthy food and safe spaces to exercise. Answer the below questions and show the work-

State	Majority political party	Violent crime rate per 100,000	Percent high school graduates	Obesity rate as %	Poverty rate as %
Colorado	Democrat	342.6	90.7	22.3	12.1
Florida	Republican	430.3	86.9	27.4	16.6
Michigan	Republican	280.5	82.3	37.3	21.9
Tennessee	Republican	434.4	87.9	33.7	17.2
Minnesota	Republican	305.9	91.0	30.7	13.2

1. There is another researcher that believes that education levels and political affiliation are
related. In this data, the measure of political affiliation is the majority party in state level
government. Is correlation an appropriate test of this relationship? Explain your
reasoning.
2. Looking at the whole set of variables in this data set, identify an X and a Y that
you think are related (other than the pair “obesity rate” and “percent high school
graduates,” and education level and political affiliation) – explain why you think your X
might influence your Y. You do not have to conduct any further analyses for that X and
Y.

Answer 1

1. As the researcher wants to find out the factors that influence the obesity, the correlation test will prove to be a good test as in correlation we first find the sample correlation between the pair of variables thought to be associated and then this sample correlation is used to test if the population (true) correlation between the variables is significant or not.

2. we can take 'percentage high school graduates' and 'poverty rates' as X and Y variables respectively as we can observe that wherever the value of X is large the value of Y is small.Hence, signifying the correlation between the two.