Association (statistics)

Imagine you have a bunch of toys, some are cars and some are dolls. You want to see if boys are more likely to choose the cars and if girls are more likely to choose the dolls. You ask 10 kids to come and choose a toy. 5 of them are boys and 5 are girls.

Out of the 5 boys, 4 of them choose the cars and only 1 of them chooses the doll. Out of the 5 girls, 3 of them choose the dolls and only 2 of them choose the cars.

When you count how many boys chose cars and how many girls chose dolls, you notice that there is a pattern. More boys chose cars and more girls chose dolls.

This pattern is what we call "association". It means that there is a relationship between two things. In this case, the gender of the kids and the type of toys they chose.

Scientists use statistics to find out if the association is strong or weak. In our example, the association is pretty strong because most boys chose cars and most girls chose dolls. But in other cases, the association may be weaker, and it might not be easy to tell if there is a relationship between two things just by looking at it.

So, association in statistics is about finding patterns or relationships between different things, and then using math to understand how strong that connection is.