How's that advertising thing working out for you, Senator?

The brain behind J-Walk Blog created a graph that charts the advertising costs and votes of the major players in yesterday's Iowa caucus. (Click graph to enlarge.)

The diagonal line is the linear best-fit line. The two variables have a correlation coefficient of 0.779. (I have no idea what that means but it seems important.)

Romney paid the most per vote: $238. Obama and Clinton both spent about $103 per vote. The biggest bargains were for Edwards ($48/vote) and Huckabee ($35/vote).

Comments

[J]

Hi! The correlation coefficient (r) shows how closely two variables are connected. If r gets close to one, it means they have a closer relationship than two variables where r is closer to zero.

I love your blog! It's on my "daily reads" list.

[PZR]

Thank you for the kind words -- they were the only part of your comment that I actually understood.

: )