Sxy Calculator

Sxy Calculator

Sxy Calculator

Enter lists of x-values and y-values to calculate \( S_{xy} \), the sum of the products of deviations from the means of x and y values.

Sxy: 0

What is \( S_{xy} \)?

In statistics, \( S_{xy} \) represents the sum of the products of deviations from the means of x and y values. It helps in understanding the linear relationship between two variables. Mathematically, \( S_{xy} \) is calculated as:

\[ S_{xy} = \sum (x_i - \bar{x})(y_i - \bar{y}) \]

where:

  • \( x_i \) and \( y_i \) represent individual x and y values,
  • \( \bar{x} \) and \( \bar{y} \) are the means of x and y values, respectively,
  • \( \sum \) represents the summation across all pairs of x and y values.

Real-Life Example

Suppose we want to analyze the relationship between study hours (x) and test scores (y) among students. If the study hours are [4, 7, 5, 8, 12, 13, 14, 12, 16, 19] and the corresponding scores are [15, 15, 17, 19, 17, 20, 21, 24, 23, 27], we can calculate \( S_{xy} \) to measure the correlation between study time and test performance.

Interpreting \( S_{xy} \)

The value of \( S_{xy} \) indicates the strength and direction of the relationship between the two variables, x and y. In the context of our example, where x represents study hours and y represents test scores:

  • Larger \( S_{xy} \): A larger \( S_{xy} \) value suggests a stronger linear relationship between study hours and test scores, implying that changes in study hours are closely associated with changes in test scores. This would mean that as study hours increase, test scores tend to increase, and as study hours decrease, test scores tend to decrease in a roughly proportional way.
  • Smaller \( S_{xy} \): A smaller \( S_{xy} \) value indicates a weaker linear relationship between study hours and test scores, implying that changes in study hours have less consistent association with changes in test scores. This could mean that factors other than study hours might be influencing test scores more significantly.
  • Zero or near-zero \( S_{xy} \): If \( S_{xy} \) is close to zero, this suggests little to no linear relationship between study hours and test scores, meaning changes in one variable do not predict changes in the other.

Further Reading