40 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know

When is linear regression used?

Linear regression is used to solve many real-world problems, including the following:

• Sales forecasting

• Predicting optimum product prices

• Quantifying the causal relationship between an event and the response, such as in clinical drug trials, engineering safety tests, or marketing research

• Identifying patterns that can be used to forecast future behavior, given known criteria—for example, predicting insurance claims, natural disaster damage, election results, and crime rates