Thread: Standard deviation and comparison of two data sets

Hi everyone,

Would be grand if you could help out. I'll try and explain myself.

I'm in the process of compiling some statistics. The first data set is financial figures over a five year period for approximately 100 higher education institutions (universities, colleges etc). The second data set is the same 100 institutions with their respective Times University Ranking over the same five year period. The third data set is the same again but with the Guardian University Rankings and the final data set is the National Student Survey (NSS) rankings.

Basically, what I'm trying to do is determine whether there is a link between increased capital expenditure and an improvement in ranking across the three ranking systems. Is there any simple way to do this? Standard deviation is one way but am I using too many data sets? Open to any suggestions as I'm struggling how best to display this without manually cross checking.

Thanks for your time

Sam

Construct a scatterplot/correlation analysis of:

1. Increased Capital Expenditure V Ranking system 1

2. Increased Capital Expenditure V Ranking system 2

3. Increased Capital Expenditure V Ranking system 3