July 2012
Intermediate to advanced
352 pages
9h 30m
English
Linear regression is a much misunderstood and mistaught concept. If a linear model provides a good fit to data, this does not imply that a plot of the dependent variable with respect to the predictor would be a straight line, only that a plot of the dependent variable with respect to some not-necessarily monotonic function of the predictor would be a line.
For example, y = A + B log[x] and y = A cos(x) + B sin(x) are both linear models whose coefficients A and B might be derived by OLS or LAD methods. Y = Ax5 is a linear model. Y = xA is nonlinear.
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