Interview Question: Tale of Two Concepts in Regression

[Ms. Moderator]

(By (author unknown))

Sample Question #272 (statistics / econometrics)

My junior quant just told me that when I run a regression like y=bx+e, where y is the dependent variable and x the independent variable, the coefficient estimate on b is just the correlation between x and y. I'm not too sure about what he said. What do you think? Is the coefficient estimate the same as the correlation?

I also heard that the R2 from the regression can be interpreted as some kind of correlation. Can you explain?

(Comment: A lot of quants mix up these concepts)

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What are your thoughts?