TITLE: Infer association from scatter plot
QUESTION [0 upvotes]: (To be honest I don't know if this is the right SE site for my question, but it is the closet I can think of!)
I'm having an argument with my friend on whether we can infer an association between the two variables from the following scatter plot:

I think there is a positive association between the fertility and child mortality, while my friend thinks this graph is too ugly for that to be inferred. My argument is that if we take the average of all y-values for each x-coordinate, the result obviously shows a positive association. Which of us is right?
UPDATE: Well, I computed the correlation coefficient and it turned out to be 0.7, which shows there exists a strong association.

REPLY [1 votes]: To me, the most interesting observations are (1) there are two distinct clusters and (2) at least one of the east asia pacific countries is a distinct outlier.   This is a great starting point for an analysis into root causes and how other variables, e.g., GNP, or Education might contribute.  It would be great to highlight high ranges or GNP or Education and see how this bivariate relationship is conditioned on these other variables.  For example, are the clusters colored differentially along these dimensions?  This is a great example for showing visualization students how seeing patterns in the data can elicit questions that 
drive the exploration process.
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