A Level Maths: Correlation and Regression Topic Summary and Resources
Video Lessons
Watch alongside the worksheet for the full lesson experience, then test your understanding with the lesson questions.
Revision Notes
Handwritten notes summarising the key ideas for each lesson. Ideal for quick review before a test.
Exam Questions
Past-paper-style questions organised by topic, with full mark schemes.
Drawn from OCR and Edexcel past papers but designed to be useful for students of all UK exam boards — including AQA and OCR MEI — unless a sheet is explicitly board-specific.
Before You Start This Topic
It will help if you are confident with the following:
- Graphical Representation of Data — scatter diagrams are the visual starting point
- Averages and Spread — connects to the underlying ideas of variation
- Exponentials and Logarithms — needed for taking logs of non-linear data
- Binomial Hypothesis Testing — provides the language of hypothesis testing
A Level Maths correlation and regression is the Year 1 statistics topic for analysing the relationship between two variables. You learn to interpret scatter diagrams, describe correlation in words, calculate the product moment correlation coefficient $r$, and use regression lines to make predictions. The Year 2 hypothesis testing extension is covered in Further Correlation and Regression.
You describe correlation using terms like positive, negative, zero, strong, and weak. You compute the product moment correlation coefficient $r$ using your calculator (the formula is not required), interpreting values from $-1$ (perfect negative correlation) through $0$ (no correlation) to $+1$ (perfect positive correlation). You use the regression line of $y$ on $x$ to predict $y$ from $x$, sticking strictly to the range of given data to avoid the dangers of extrapolation. For non-linear relationships like $y = ax^n$ or $y = kb^x$, you take logs and use linear regression on the transformed data to estimate the constants $a$, $b$, $n$, or $k$.
Correlation and regression is part of the Statistics strand of A Level Maths for AQA, Edexcel, OCR, and OCR MEI students.
Watch out for…
A few things to be careful with: correlation does NOT imply causation — a strong correlation between ice cream sales and drownings does not mean one causes the other (both depend on temperature); regression should be used for INTERPOLATION (within the data range) only — extrapolation is unreliable; the regression line of $y$ on $x$ is different from the regression line of $x$ on $y$, so check which the question wants; and when using logs to linearise, remember to back-transform the constants at the end if the question wants the original form.