A Level Maths: Further 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:
- Correlation and Regression — Year 1 correlation work is the immediate prerequisite
- Binomial Hypothesis Testing — provides the hypothesis testing framework
- Statistical Sampling — needed to understand the sample-vs-population distinction
A Level Maths further correlation and regression is the Year 2 statistics topic that extends Correlation and Regression with hypothesis testing. You learn to test whether observed correlation in a sample provides sufficient evidence to conclude that the underlying population is genuinely correlated, rather than the appearance of correlation being a coincidence of sampling.
You state hypotheses in terms of the population correlation coefficient $\rho$, with a null hypothesis of $\rho = 0$ (no correlation in the population) against alternatives that $\rho > 0$, $\rho < 0$, or $\rho \ne 0$. You compute the sample correlation coefficient $r$ using your calculator, then compare it against a critical value from a table — provided in the exam — for the relevant sample size and significance level. You decide whether to reject the null hypothesis based on whether $|r|$ exceeds the critical value, then write conclusions in the context of the original problem. Year 2 statistics often combines this with The Normal Distribution and Binomial Hypothesis Testing in the same exam paper.
Further 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: hypotheses are stated in terms of $\rho$ (the POPULATION correlation), not $r$ (the SAMPLE correlation); for a two-tailed test you compare $|r|$ against the critical value, but check the table you are using — some tables give one-tailed critical values that need adjusting; never write 'accept $H_0$' — say 'do not reject $H_0$' or 'insufficient evidence to suggest correlation'; and write conclusions in CONTEXT, not just 'reject $H_0$' — say 'there is sufficient evidence to suggest positive correlation between… at the $5\%$ level'.