37. Correlation errors Your Economics instructor asks the class to investigate factors associated with the gross domestic product (GDP) of nations. Each student examines a different factor (life expectancy, literacy rate, etc.) for a few countries and reports to the class. Apparently, some of your classmates do not understand statistics very well because you know several of their conclusions are incorrect. Explain the mistakes in their statements below.

a) “My correlation of −0.772 shows that there is almost no association between GDP and infant mortality rate.”

b) “There was a correlation of 0.44 between GDP and continent.”