Started teaching my first recitation class. Need some help with topics.

[BrianM1]

Hey all!
I just started teaching my recitation class last week, I am a teacher's assistant.
If you don't know what it is, it's a once a week class where the Psych 101 students can ask questions because the regular 101 class is too big and askign questions would take away time from the material being taught.
The first class was very good, but today was a different story.
We came upon topics such as Neurology and Experiments. I got through the experiments well enough, but the questions for correlation kind of threw me off.
I can't seem to find a good example of a negative correlation. I'm not sure if an example would be, the more you study, the more you fail?
And just to be sure can someone provide me with a good positive correlation example?

And can someone clear up a skewed distribution?
I hated statistics and experimental methods class as you can tell haha!

[squid]

I know this is sortof late but maybe this will help anyway.  A negative correlation is basically when the two variables essentially act in an opposite manner for instance there is a negative correlation between alcohol intake and coordination (first one off the top of my head) - the more you drink the less coordinated you become - one increases and a concurrent decrease is seen in the other.  Just remember that operative word though - correlation to avoid making any unsubstantiated causative claims.  A positive correlation is when the two variables correlate in the "same direction".  For instance, elevated cortisol levels often correlate with increases scores on measures of state anxiety - cortisol goes up and so does the anxiety score.

Skewness in a distribution refers to the shape of a distribution curve.  The normative curve is the often seen "bell" shaped curve.  A curve may also be skewed positively or negatively with more scores appearing on one side than the other.  Here's a good image to help you see what I mean:



You may also here someone refer to the kurtosis of a distribution.  Kurtosis refers to the "peak" of the distribution and there's different types which I won't bother to get into but just remember it refers to the shape of the distribution's peak.

Anyhow, I hope this little bit helps, if it's not too late.