Book Image

Regression Analysis with Python

By : Luca Massaron, Alberto Boschetti
4 (1)
Book Image

Regression Analysis with Python

4 (1)
By: Luca Massaron, Alberto Boschetti

Overview of this book

Regression is the process of learning relationships between inputs and continuous outputs from example data, which enables predictions for novel inputs. There are many kinds of regression algorithms, and the aim of this book is to explain which is the right one to use for each set of problems and how to prepare real-world data for it. With this book you will learn to define a simple regression problem and evaluate its performance. The book will help you understand how to properly parse a dataset, clean it, and create an output matrix optimally built for regression. You will begin with a simple regression algorithm to solve some data science problems and then progress to more complex algorithms. The book will enable you to use regression models to predict outcomes and take critical business decisions. Through the book, you will gain knowledge to use Python for building fast better linear models and to apply the results in Python or in any computer language you prefer.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Regression Analysis with Python
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Defining a probability-based approach


Let's gradually introduce how logistic regression works. We said that it's a classifier, but its name recalls a regressor. The element we need to join the pieces is the probabilistic interpretation.

In a binary classification problem, the output can be either "0" or "1". What if we check the probability of the label belonging to class "1"? More specifically, a classification problem can be seen as: given the feature vector, find the class (either 0 or 1) that maximizes the conditional probability:

Here's the connection: if we compute a probability, the classification problem looks like a regression problem. Moreover, in a binary classification problem, we just need to compute the probability of membership of class "1", and therefore it looks like a well-defined regression problem. In the regression problem, classes are no longer "1" or "0" (as strings), but 1.0 and 0.0 (as the probability of belonging to class "1").

Let's now try fitting a multiple linear...