Chapter 18

Getting Straight Talk on ­Straight-Line Regression

In This Chapter

arrow Determining when to use straight-line regression

arrow Grasping the theory

arrow Doing straight-line regression and making sense of the output

arrow Watching for things that can go wrong

arrow Estimating the sample size you need

Chapter 17 talks about regression analyses in a general way. This chapter focuses on the simplest kind of regression analysis: straight-line regression. You can visualize it as “fitting” a straight line to the points in a scatter plot from a set of data involving just two variables. Those two variables are generally referred to as X and Y.

check.png The X variable is formally called the independent variable (or the predictor or cause).

check.png The Y variable is called the dependent variable (or the outcome or effect).

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