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The mortality rate from melanoma (skin cancer) during the 1950s was recorded for each of the 48 contiguous United States, plus Washington D.C. (as reported by Fisher and Van Belle (1993) and found on http://www.stat.psu.edu/~lsimon/stat501wc/sp05/data/).

The following is the scatterplot of the data:

The plot shows a negative linear relationship between the latitude of the state and melanoma mortality rate.

In context, the negative relationship (shown in the scatterplot above) means that:

The more southern the state, the higher the melanoma death rate.
The more northern the state, the higher the melanoma death rate.
he more southern the state, the more people died of melanoma.

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