It is the convention to put the dependent variable (Y) on the vertical axis and the independent variable (X) on the horizontal axis. If we look at any one of these points (A-E) and draw a straight line down to the horizontal axis, we can find out the unemployment rate in that town. Similarly, by drawing a straight line across to the vertical axis we can “read off” the number of civil distribution. Grid lines for city C have been drawn in to illustrate this procedure. For this town the unemployment rate is 15 per cent and there are also five civil disturbances. Looking at this scatter plot, it can intuitively be seen that a correlation exists, because we can almost imagine a sloping line that runs through these five points. The direction of association is indicated by whether this imaginary line slopes up (positive) or down (negative). In this case the slope is positive, indicating that an increase in unemployment rate is correlated with an increase in the number of civil disturbances.