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

12.2 MULTICOLLINEARITY

Data scientists need to guard against multicollinearity, a condition where some of the predictor variables are correlated with each other. Multicollinearity leads to instability in the solution space, leading, for example, to regression coefficients you cannot trust, because the coefficient variability is so large. Multicollinearity is an occupational hazard for data scientists, because many of the data sets have dozens if not hundreds of predictors, some of which are often correlated.

Consider Figures 12.1 and 12.2. Figure 12.1 illustrates a situation where the predictors x1 and x2 are not correlated with each other; that is, they are orthogonal, or independent. In such a case, the predictors form a solid basis, upon which the response surface y may rest sturdily, thereby providing stable coefficient estimates b1 and b2 each with small variability. On the other hand, Figure 12.2 illustrates a multicollinear situation where the predictors x1 and x2 are correlated...