Book Image

Data Science Using Python and R

By : Chantal D. Larose, Daniel T. Larose
Book Image

Data Science Using Python and R

By: Chantal D. Larose, Daniel T. Larose

Overview of this book

Data science is hot. Bloomberg named a data scientist as the ‘hottest job in America’. Python and R are the top two open-source data science tools using which you can produce hands-on solutions to real-world business problems, using state-of-the-art techniques. Each chapter in the book presents step-by-step instructions and walkthroughs for solving data science problems using Python and R. You’ll learn how to prepare data, perform exploratory data analysis, and prepare to model the data. As you progress, you’ll explore what are decision trees and how to use them. You’ll also learn about model evaluation, misclassification costs, naïve Bayes classification, and neural networks. The later chapters provide comprehensive information about clustering, regression modeling, dimension reduction, and association rules mining. The book also throws light on exciting new topics, such as random forests and general linear models. The book emphasizes data-driven error costs to enhance profitability, which avoids the common pitfalls that may cost a company millions of dollars. By the end of this book, you’ll have enough knowledge and confidence to start providing solutions to data science problems using R and Python.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
17
INDEX
18
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

11.7 STEPWISE REGRESSION

In this small example, we had only three predictors. But, most data science projects use dozens if not hundreds of predictors. We therefore need a method to ease the selection of the best regression model. This method is called stepwise regression. In stepwise regression, helpful predictors are entered into the model one at a time, starting with the most helpful predictor. Because of multicollinearity or other effects, when several helpful variables are entered, one of them may no longer be considered helpful any more, and should be dropped. For this reason, stepwise regression adds the most helpful predictors into the model one at a time and then checks to see if they all still belong. Finally, the stepwise algorithm can find no further helpful predictors and converges to a final model.

The application of stepwise regression (not shown) to the clothing_sales_training and clothing_sales_test data sets converged on the final models displayed in Figures 11.3 and...