The amount of money spent each year on science, space, and technology in the United States (in millions of dollars) and the amount of money spent on pets in the United States (in billions of dollars) for the years 2000 to 2009 were used to construct the graph below. (The data are from the web site tylervigen.com/spurious correlations, accessed August 28, 2016).

Based on these time series plots, would the correlation coefficient between amount spent on science, space, and technology and the amount spent on pets be positive or negative? Weak or strong? What aspect of the time series plots support your answer?

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US spending on science, space, and technology Money spent on pets (US) -70 30000 28285.71 26571.43 24857.14 23142.86 21428.57 -60 40 19714.29 -30 18000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2008 2006 2007 2009 Billions of dollars