On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union voted that Pluto is not a planet. Some members of the public have been reluctant to accept that decision. Let's look at some of the data. Is there any pattern to the locations of the planets? The table shows the average distance of each of the traditional nine planets from the sun.

a) Make a scatterplot and describe the association. (Remember: direction, form, and strength!)
b) Why would you not want to talk about the correlation between a planet's Position Number and Distance from the sun?
c) Make a scatterplot showing the logarithm of Distance vs. Position Number. What is better about this scatterplot?
d) Looking only at the scatterplot, what is Kendall's tau for these data? Explain.

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PositionDistance from Sun Number (million miles) Planet Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto 36 93 142 484 887 1784 2796 3666