Regression is a way to test the influence one variable has upon another.
This is basically what you were doing before by looking at gamma statistics, but this is a more sophisticated way to do it. If you still don't understand the difference between nominal and ordinal variables, please talk to me about it. In your previous assignments, many of you have been a bit hazy about which correlations are likely to be direct and which may be indirect. A direct correlation is one where it seems likely that one variable exerts a direct effect upon the other. An indirect one means that both variables are related to a third variable which is not directly visible.