Hi there,
I am a student undertaking a non-mathematical subject at university doing a research project and I have some data I need to analyse, only the last time I did any statistics was 5 years ago at school so I need some advice!
I have 2 variables which are clinical measurements taken from a number of patients in a clinic (variables called A and B); A is numerical continuous and B is numerical but has to be a whole number.
My aim is to demonstrate their correlation with one another, and identify specific pairs of data which are discrepant i.e. do not fit into the correlation. I'm struggling to identify via google which statistical method is best to do each of these things (or whether there is one that will do both).
My specific questions are these:
1. Is B a continuous or categorical variable since is has to be a whole number?
2. What statistical method would be best to 1) demonstrate correlation between points A and B (linear regression? Mann-Whitney? Pearson?) and 2) identify patients who have discrepant data pairs (no idea!)?
Many thanks for any advice given.
EDIT: can this be done with Z-scores? As in using simple regression to find the correlation coefficient, and then using that to find the predicted z-score for A depending upon the z-score for B? Not sure how I would interpret how far out the true value was though and whether this was discrepant.