What is covariance and how does it apply to statistics?”
Compare this to Variance, which is just the range over which one measure (or variable) varies. In studying social patterns, you might hypothesize that wealthier people are likely to be more educated, so you’d try to see how closely measures of wealth and education stay together. You would use a measure of covariance to determine this. For more information and a definition and formula, go to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covariance If you’re using SPSS, here’s a good site at the University of Texas that helps use the software to do whatever you want to do with it: http://www.utexas.edu/cc/stat/software/spss/#Internet that site also contains links to other stats sites. I’m not sure what you mean when you ask how does it apply to statistics. It is one measure taught in many stats classes. Did you mean, when should you use it? You
