A. Two events are independent if and only if the odds ratio is 1; if the odds ratio is greater than 1, the events are positively associated; if the odds ratio is less than 1, the events are negatively associated. The odds ratio has a simple expression in terms of probabilities; given the joint probability distribution: the odds ratio is: Phi coefficient A simple measure, applicable only to the case of 2 × 2 contingency tables, is the phi coefficient (φ) defined by where is computed as in Pearson's chi-squared test, and N is the grand total of observations. φ varies from 0 (corresponding to no association between the variables) to 1 or −1 (complete association or complete inverse association), provided it is based on frequency data represented in 2 × 2 tables. Then its sign equals the sign of the product of the main diagonal elements of the table minus the product of the off–diagonal elements. φ takes on the minimum value −1.0 or the maximum value of +1.0 if and only if every marginal proportion is equal to 0.5 (and two diagonal cells are empty). Cramér's V and the contingency coefficient C Two alternatives are the contingency coefficient C, and Cramér's V. The formulae for the C and V coefficients are: and k being the number of rows or the number of columns, whichever is less. C suffers from the disadvantage that it does not reach a maximum of 1.0, notably the highest it can reach in a 2 × 2 table is 0.707 . It can reach values closer to 1.0 in contingency tables with more categories; for example, it can reach a maximum of 0.870 in a 4 × 4 table. It should, therefore, not be used to compare associations in different tables if they have different numbers of categories. C can be adjusted so it reaches a maximum of 1.0 when there is complete association in a table of any number of rows and columns by dividing C by where k is the number of rows or columns, when the table is square , or by where r is the number of rows and c is the number of columns. Tetrachoric correlation coefficient Another choice is the tetrachoric correlation coefficient but it is only applicable to 2 × 2 tables. Polychoric correlation is an extension of the tetrachoric correlation to tables involving variables with more