PEARSON - Excel - Microsoft Office Online

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PEARSON

Applies to: Microsoft Office Excel 2003

Returns the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, r, a dimensionless index that ranges from -1.0 to 1.0 inclusive and reflects the extent of a linear relationship between two data sets.

Syntax

PEARSON(array1,array2)

Array1 is a set of independent values.

Array2 is a set of dependent values.

Remarks

The arguments must be either numbers or names, array constants, or references that contain numbers.
If an array or reference argument contains text, logical values, or empty cells, those values are ignored; however, cells with the value zero are included.
If array1 and array2 are empty or have a different number of data points, PEARSON returns the #N/A error value.
The formula for the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, r, is:

where x and y are the sample means AVERAGE(array1) and AVERAGE(array2).

Example

The example may be easier to understand if you copy it to a blank worksheet.

Show How to copy an example

Create a blank workbook or worksheet.
Select the example in the Help topic.
Note Do not select the row or column headers.

Selecting an example from Help
Press CTRL+C.
In the worksheet, select cell A1, and press CTRL+V.
To switch between viewing the results and viewing the formulas that return the results, press CTRL+` (grave accent), or on the Tools menu, point to Formula Auditing, and then click Formula Auditing Mode.

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A	B
Independent values	Dependent values
9	10
7	6
5	1
3	5
1	3
Formula	Description (Result)
=PEARSON(A2:A6,B2:B6)	Pearson product moment correlation coefficient for the data sets above (0.699379)