In mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, bivariate data is data that involves two variables

Variable (mathematics)

In mathematics, a variable is a value that may change within the scope of a given problem or set of operations. In contrast, a constant is a value that remains unchanged, though often unknown or undetermined. The concepts of constants and variables are fundamental to many areas of mathematics and...

. The quantities from these two variables are often represented using a scatter plot. This is done so that the relationship (if any) between the variables is easily seen.

Dependent and Independent Variables

In some instances of bivariate data, it is determined that one variable influences or determines the second variable, and the terms dependent and independent variables are used to distinguish between the two types of variables.

Correlations occur between the two variables or data sets. These are determined as strong or weak correlations and are rated on a scale of 0-1. 1 being a perfect correlation and 0.1 being a weak correlation

Analysis of Bivariate Data

In the analysis of bivariate data, one typically either compares summary statistics

Summary statistics

In descriptive statistics, summary statistics are used to summarize a set of observations, in order to communicate the largest amount as simply as possible...

 of each of the variable quantities or uses regression analysis

Regression analysis

In statistics, regression analysis includes many techniques for modeling and analyzing several variables, when the focus is on the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables...

to find a more direct relationship between the data.