title: Partial Correlations in R
body: <p>I am trying to compute a partial correlation in R. I have the two data sets that I want to compare and currently only one controlled variable. (This will change in the future)</p>
  
  <p>I have looked online to try to work this out myself but it is difficult to understand the terminology used on the websites I have looked at. Can someone please explain how I would go about doing this and perhaps provide a simple example?</p>
  
  <p>Data is in the following form:</p>
  
  <pre><code>                Project.Name Bugs.Project Changes.Project Orgs.Project
  1     platform_external_svox            4             161            2
  3 platform_packages_apps_Nfc           13             223            2
  5      platform_system_media           36             307            2
  7     platform_external_mtpd            2              30            2
  9            platform_bionic           42            1061            4
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want the correlation between Bugs.Project and Orgs.Project with Changes.Project as a controlled variable. I have downloaded the <code>ppcor</code> library since it looks like it has the functionality that I need. I am unsure how to use it, however. How do I add my data to a matrix and use the <code>pcor</code> function?</p>
  
  <p>This is what I've been trying:</p>
  
  <pre><code>y.data &lt;- data.frame(
  bpp=c(projRelateBugsOrgs[2]),
  opp=c(projRelateBugsOrgs[4]),
  cpp=c(projRelateBugsOrgs[3])
  )
  
  test &lt;- pcor(y.data)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I just used an example I found and tried to use my data in place of theirs. I don't understand my output.</p>
  
  <p>It looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$estimate
                  Bugs.Project Orgs.Project Changes.Project
  Bugs.Project       1.0000000    0.3935535       0.9749296
  Orgs.Project       0.3935535    1.0000000      -0.1800788
  Changes.Project    0.9749296   -0.1800788       1.0000000
  
  $p.value
                  Bugs.Project Orgs.Project Changes.Project
  Bugs.Project     0.00000e+00  2.09795e-07       0.0000000
  Orgs.Project     2.09795e-07  0.00000e+00       0.0264442
  Changes.Project  0.00000e+00  2.64442e-02       0.0000000
  
  $statistic
                  Bugs.Project Orgs.Project Changes.Project
  Bugs.Project        0.000000     5.190442       53.122165
  Orgs.Project        5.190442     0.000000       -2.219625
  Changes.Project    53.122165    -2.219625        0.000000
  
  $n
  [1] 150
  
  $gp
  [1] 1
  
  $method
  [1] "pearson"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I think I want something from the $estimate table but I'm not exactly sure what it's giving me,</p>