Porter A M
J R Soc Med. 1999 Mar;92(3):123-8. doi: 10.1177/014107689909200306.
Errors relating to the use of the correlation coefficient and bivariate linear regression are often to be found in medical publications. This paper reports a literature search to define the problems. All the papers and letters published in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine during 1997 were screened for examples. Fifteen categories of errors were identified of which eight were important or common. These included: failure to define clearly the relevant sample number; the display of potentially misleading scatterplots; attachment of unwarranted importance to significance levels; and the omission of confidence intervals for correlation coefficients and around regression lines.
与相关系数和双变量线性回归使用有关的错误在医学出版物中屡见不鲜。本文报告了一项旨在明确这些问题的文献检索。对1997年发表在《英国医学杂志》《柳叶刀》和《新英格兰医学杂志》上的所有论文和信件进行了筛查以寻找实例。共识别出15类错误，其中8类较为重要或常见。这些错误包括：未明确界定相关样本数量；展示可能产生误导的散点图；对显著性水平赋予不合理的重要性；以及遗漏相关系数和回归线周围的置信区间。
