What is the relation between the SC population and SC literacy?

TL;DR: Nothing (that I could find)

After I published a set of maps, one thing that people (including me) wondered is

What is the relationship between the population size of SC community and their literacy? Are those regions, doing better, do it because the SC are more in number and are able to assert themselves better in the society?

This post is aimed at answering that question based on the Census 2011 data available from Tamilnadu Government website: http://www.tn.gov.in/deptst/areaandpopulation.pdf

The following data points were used:

  1. Total population
  2. Overall Literacy
  3. Total SC population
  4. SC Literacy
  • The gap between Overall literacy rate and SC literacy was calculated
  • The percentage of SC population was calculated
  • Finally, the correlation coefficient between the SC percentage and Literacy Gap was calculated

sc_lit_pop_correlation

There is a very week (0.13) or almost no correlation between the strength of the SC population of in society and their literacy gap. Here are the maps for comparison

[gallery ids=”634,637” type=”columns”]

You might be thinking, forget the gap, maybe there is a correlation between their literacy and population number.

sc_pop_litrate_correlation

Nope. Still nothing. Here are the maps to compare.

[gallery ids=”637,624” type=”columns”]