Modeling 1: Overview and linear regression in R

Intro and Objectives

One of the workhorses of statistical predictive modeling is the family of linear models. We’ll do things like multiple linear regression for numeric predictions and logistic regression as a classifier for binary response variables. We’ll use these relatively simple models as a way to also learn about important modeling topics such as partitioning data into training and test sets, model training, validation and diagnostics. We’ll also use regression to introduce the notion of parameter estimation, error metrics for assessing model fit and for comparing candidate models against each other. These topics underlie all of statistical learning algorithms.

Readings

  • PDSwR - Ch 5, 7.1

  • RforE - Ch 19 and 21

  • ISLR - Ch 1-3 and 4.1-4.3

An Introduction to Statistical Learning with applications in R

This is an outstanding book, which is available as a free pdf. ISLR covers the main statistical learning topics at a nice introductory level. There is a more mathy version that preceded it called Elements of Statistical Learning. It also has a freely available pdf.

I will be listing the associated reading that you can do from ISLR as we explore various statistical learning topics - starting with linear regression.

Downloads and other resources

If you are rusty on statistics, there’s a really good OpenIntro Stats book available as a free online book or you can pay what you want for a paperback copy. It includes R based material.

Activities

We are going to work through a series of tutorials exploring the topic of building, using and evaluating predictive linear regression models.

Explore (OPTIONAL)

Regression modeling

General data science