What is the difference between a scatter plot and an OLS regression?

Question

When looking at a scatter plot and an Ordinary Least Squares regression, what is the difference between the two? When I look at each graph, they look basically the same to me. Why would one use OLS over a scatter plot (especially when using a program like STATA)?

Answer 1

They are two completely different entities. A scatterplot is a graph of raw data. The data are displayed as discrete dots in a Cartesian coordinate system. A least squares regression LINE is a line, defined by a formula.

Presumably, the only way you could confuse the two is that your data are very linear and R^2 is close to 1, and you have a whole lot of points. With enough data points coupled tightly enough together, it will appear to be a line.