12.3 The regression equation  (Page 2/8)

In the diagram in [link] , y ₀ – ŷ ₀ = ε ₀ is the residual for the point shown. Here the point lies above the line and the residual is positive.

ε = the Greek letter epsilon

For each data point, you can calculate the residuals or errors, y _i - ŷ _i = ε _i for i = 1, 2, 3, ..., 11.

Each | ε | is a vertical distance.

For the example about the third exam scores and the final exam scores for the 11 statistics students, there are 11 data points. Therefore, there are 11 ε values. If yousquare each ε and add, you get

$${({\epsilon }_1)}^2+{({\epsilon }_2)}^2+\mathrm{...}+{({\epsilon }_{11})}^2=\stackrel{11}{\underset{i=1}{\Sigma }}{\epsilon }^2$$

This is called the Sum of Squared Errors (SSE) .

Using calculus, you can determine the values of a and b that make the SSE a minimum. When you make the SSE a minimum, you have determined the points that are on the line of best fit. It turns out thatthe line of best fit has the equation:

where $a=\overline{y}-b\overline{x}$ and $b=\frac{\Sigma (x-\overline{x})(y-\overline{y})}{\Sigma {(x-\overline{x})}^2}$ .

The sample means of the x values and the y values are $\overline{x}$ and $\overline{y}$ , respectively. The best fit line always passes through the point $(\overline{x},\overline{y})$ .

The slope b can be written as $b=r\left(\frac{s_y}{s_x}\right)$ where s _y = the standard deviation of the y values and s _x = the standard deviation of the x values. r is the correlation coefficient, which is discussed in the next section.

Least squares criteria for best fit

The process of fitting the best-fit line is called linear regression . The idea behind finding the best-fit line is based on the assumption that the data are scattered about a straight line. The criteria for the best fit line is that the sum of the squared errors (SSE) is minimized, that is, made as small as possible. Any other line you might choose would have a higher SSE than the best fit line. This best fit line is called the least-squares regression line .

Third exam vs final exam example:

The least squares regression line (best-fit line) for the third-exam/final-exam example has the equation:

Understanding slope

The slope of the line, b , describes how changes in the variables are related. It is important to interpret the slope of the line in the context of the situation represented by the data. You should be able to write a sentence interpreting the slope in plain English.