Identifying Relationships Between Variables

Introduction
This paper analyzes the cost-of-living index in relation to the groceries index for 7 cities
in the United States. The statistics have been sourced from Numbeo.com for the seven cities. The
paper seeks to identify and analyze the relationship between the cost of living and the cost of
groceries using the data provided.
City Groceries Cost of living
New York 100 100
San Francisco 101.09 96.36
Oakland 96.34 93.14
Berkeley 103.57 91.99
Seattle 89.78 88.20
Anchorage 94.21 88.02
Washington DC 89.96 87.32
Table 1 : Cost of living in 7 USA cities (Numbeo, 2022)

80859095100105
80
82
84
86
88
90
92
94
96
98
100
102

Cost of living index

Figure 1 : Cost of living trend line & equation

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The above table shows the relationship between the cost of living and the cost of
groceries from the data in the table. The data has been developed in relation to the City of New
York. This means that the indices are relative to the cost of living and the cost of indices in New
York. For example, the cost of groceries in San Francisco is 101.90. This is indicative that in
Francisco, the cost of groceries is 1.9% more than the prices in New York. The trend line in
figure 1 is indicative that the cost-of-living increases with an increase in the cost of groceries.
The R square value is 0.53. R square accurately measures the strength between dependent and
independent variables (Chicco et al., 2021). This means that 53% of the changes in the cost of
living are attributable to the cost of groceries.
The Cities of Francisco, New York, Oakland, and Seattle best indicate the relationship
between the cost of groceries and the cost of living. For example, the cost of groceries index in
Oakland is 96.34, and the cost-of-living index is 93. 14. Seattle has a significantly lower cost of
living index of 88.20, and the cost of groceries index is 89.78. In San Francisco, the cost of
groceries is higher at 101.09, and the cost-of-living increases to 96.36.
The cities of Berkeley and Anchorage depict the worst relationship between the cost of
groceries and the cost of living. Berkeley, for example, has a cost of groceries index of 103.57,
which is the highest among the 7 selected cities. However, the cost of living is lower at 91.99.
Conclusion
This paper has summarized the relationship between the cost of groceries and the cost of living
in 7 United States cities. The summary shows that there is a 53% correlation between the two
variables in the 7 selected cities.

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References

Chicco, D., Warrens, M. J., & Jurman, G. (2021). The coefficient of determination R-squared is
more informative than SMAPE, MAE, MAPE, MSE and RMSE in regression analysis
evaluation. PeerJ Computer Science, 7, e623. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.623
Numbeo. (2022). Northern America: Current Cost of Living Index by City. Numbeo.Com.
Retrieved April 24, 2022, from https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/region_rankings_current.jsp?region=021