As I've mentioned to at least one person before, I don't think Wikipedia is not the best place to learn about statistics (unless one is from the field) - it is very dense material. Other educational material on the web like lecture notes that lecturers make for students are better/more accessible I think.I'm a bit shoddy on statistics stuff, so don't really understand how these things are calculated, or having much understanding of their significance. Dolphin suggested 'The Cartoon Guide to Statistics' as an appropriate text for my level of ignorance, but I've yet to get around to it.
I should really take the time to re-read the paper properly, and do some googling. I didn't take much in from it first time around. I'm off to read the wikipedia page on the 'Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient'.