# Regression¶

The purpose of regression is to fit a line. This line is used to interpret some sort of relationship between one or more “x” variables and a “y” variable. For example:

$y = \alpha + \beta x$

describes a straight line with intercept $$\alpha$$ and slope $$\beta$$. The variable x is referred to as the regressor in this model. Models can have multiple regressors.

We can generate some data that draws such a line. In this example, take $$\alpha=4$$ and $$\beta=0.5$$.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

np.random.seed(0)
line = pd.DataFrame(columns=['x','y']) # creates an empty DataFrame (a DataFrame with no rows) named 'line' that has column names 'x' and 'y'
line['x'] = np.random.randint(low=-10, high=10, size=100)
line['y'] = 4 + 0.5 * line['x']

x y
0 2 5.0
1 5 6.5
2 -10 -1.0
3 -7 0.5
4 -7 0.5

Using the seaborn plot function lineplot(), we can visualize this line.

import seaborn as sns

sns.lineplot(x='x', y='y', data=line)

<AxesSubplot:xlabel='x', ylabel='y'>


No surprises here, we get a straight line. The slope is one-half, and the intercept is 4.

Concept review: Report the descriptive statistics for x and y below.

line.describe()

x y
count 100.000000 100.000000
mean -1.120000 3.440000
std 6.148466 3.074233
min -10.000000 -1.000000
25% -7.000000 0.500000
50% -1.500000 3.250000
75% 5.000000 6.500000
max 9.000000 8.500000

In the real world, relationships between $$x$$’s and $$y$$’s are usually complicated. That is, there is no line that perfectly describes the connection between $$x$$ and $$y$$. Our goal is to find the best possible approximation of a relationship. For instance, change the above equation to

$y = \alpha + \beta x + u$

where $$u$$ is some random, un-observed phenomenon that makes any pair of values $$(x,y)$$ partially unpredictable. Consider the following simulated dataset, where $$y$$ and $$x$$ have a known relationship (we know $$\alpha=4$$ and $$\beta=0.5$$) with some error thrown in to the mix.

np.random.seed(0)
df = pd.DataFrame(columns=['x','y'])
df['x'] = np.random.normal(2, 1, 100)
df['y'] = 4 + 0.5 * df['x'] + np.random.normal(0, 0.5, 100)
sns.scatterplot(x='x', y='y', data=df)

<AxesSubplot:xlabel='x', ylabel='y'>


In this example, the random error component $$u$$ makes it so that $$y$$ is no longer perfectly described by $$x$$ and the parameters $$\alpha,\beta$$.

Concept review: Create a new column of data called 'u'. Set 'u' equal to 'y' minus (4 plus one-half 'x'), then plot the distribution of 'u'.

df['u'] = df['y'] - 4 - .5*df['x']
sns.displot(df['u'], kde=True)

<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7ff35a370c40>


When performing analytics, we’ll be given data. Suppose that data looks like what’s described in df. So, for example, we can see that the first few and last few rows look like:

df.describe()

x y u
count 100.000000 100.000000 100.000000
mean 2.059808 5.070910 0.041006
std 1.012960 0.765313 0.519940
min -0.552990 3.120177 -1.111702
25% 1.356143 4.509295 -0.372715
50% 2.094096 5.037010 0.012327
75% 2.737077 5.754808 0.423740
max 4.269755 6.823602 1.191572

When all we have is the data, the values of $$\alpha$$ and $$\beta$$ are unknown to us. In this case, our mission is to use linear regression so that we have the best possible linear fit between $$y$$ and $$x$$.

Such a “line of best fit” is shown below.

sns.lmplot(x='x', y='y', data=df)

<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7ff35a378220>


This line is solved, by seaborn, using regression. But seaborn only computes the regression fit for the purposes of making a plot. It doesn’t tell you what the beta coefficient, $$\beta$$, is estimated to be. Nor does it report the estimated intercept $$\alpha$$.

When parameters like $$\alpha$$ and $$\beta$$ are estimated, we usually put “hats” on them to denote that it’s an estimated value. Thus, the estimated relationship is given by

$\hat{y} = \hat{\alpha} + \hat{\beta} x$

which tells us that, using the estimated values for $$\alpha$$ and $$\beta$$, one would estimate the value for $$y$$ to be $$\hat{y}$$, given the value $$x$$.

There are many commands that can be used to generate this linear regression fit, and those will be discussed in a little bit.

First, let’s consider the effect of an outlier on the sample.

Let’s hard-code a data error in the pandas DataFrame variable df by using the .loc function to change the y value for one of the rows.

df.loc[0,'y'] = df.loc[0,'y']*10


What we’ve done in the above line of code is increase the y value of the first observation by a factor of 10. This is a reasonable error to consider, using real (non-simulated) data, someone could very well accidentally hit the zero key when entering in rows of x and y data by hand.

First, let’s look at the boxplot.

sns.displot(df['y'])

<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7ff35acc0a00>


The outlier we’ve entered stands out clearly. We can verify that the outlier we’re seeing is in fact the first row we modified by typing:

df.iloc[0]

x     3.764052
y    68.236015
u     0.941575
Name: 0, dtype: float64


and noticing that the y value there is indeed the point we’re seeing as an outlier in the data.

What happens if we don’t correct for this issue when we perform an analytics task like linear regression? Note that the scatter plot likewise shows a big problem due to the outlier.

sns.scatterplot(x='x', y='y', data=df)

<AxesSubplot:xlabel='x', ylabel='y'>


How can we expect Python to find a line of best fit through that scatter plot, when there is such an egregious outlier in the plot?

Look what happens in the regression:

sns.lmplot(x='x', y='y', data=df)

<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7ff35a2cc070>


While it may be hard to see the change, note that the line of best fit now reaches above all of the y values on the right hand side of the scatter plot, and dips below them on the left hand side. In the earlier regression, this did not happen. What’s occurred here is the line of best fit now has a much steeper slope than it did before. This is because the outlier point, which is towards the right side of the x distribution and is significantly above the rest of the y data, skews the line of best fit to be much more positively sloping.

We’ll discuss solutions to remove outliers on an ad hoc basis.

sns.lmplot(x='x', y='y', data=df[df['y'] < 20])

<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7ff35a2aaee0>


For some real-world sample data, we will make use of resources available through the wooldridge module. The wooldridge module was written to correspond to the introductory textbook by Wooldridge.

In Jupyter, we can install user-written modules with the !pip magic command.

!pip install wooldridge --user

Requirement already satisfied: wooldridge in /home/james/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages (0.4.4)
Requirement already satisfied: pandas in /mnt/software/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from wooldridge) (1.2.2)
Requirement already satisfied: python-dateutil>=2.7.3 in /mnt/software/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from pandas->wooldridge) (2.8.1)
Requirement already satisfied: pytz>=2017.3 in /mnt/software/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from pandas->wooldridge) (2021.1)
Requirement already satisfied: numpy>=1.16.5 in /mnt/software/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from pandas->wooldridge) (1.19.2)
Requirement already satisfied: six>=1.5 in /mnt/software/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from python-dateutil>=2.7.3->pandas->wooldridge) (1.15.0)


Load the 'ceosal1' data and describe it.

import wooldridge as woo
ceos = woo.data('ceosal1')
ceos.describe()

salary pcsalary sales roe pcroe ros indus finance consprod utility lsalary lsales
count 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000 209.000000
mean 1281.119617 13.282297 6923.793282 17.184211 10.800478 61.803828 0.320574 0.220096 0.287081 0.172249 6.950386 8.292265
std 1372.345308 32.633921 10633.271088 8.518509 97.219399 68.177052 0.467818 0.415306 0.453486 0.378503 0.566374 1.013161
min 223.000000 -61.000000 175.199997 0.500000 -98.900002 -58.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 5.407172 5.165928
25% 736.000000 -1.000000 2210.300049 12.400000 -21.200001 21.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 6.601230 7.700883
50% 1039.000000 9.000000 3705.199951 15.500000 -3.000000 52.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 6.946014 8.217492
75% 1407.000000 20.000000 7177.000000 20.000000 19.500000 81.000000 1.000000 0.000000 1.000000 0.000000 7.249215 8.878636
max 14822.000000 212.000000 97649.898438 56.299999 977.000000 418.000000 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 9.603868 11.489144

We will consider the relation between ROE and CEO salary.

Concept check: Plot the line of best fit between 'salary' (y-axis) and 'roe' (x-axis).

sns.lmplot(x='roe', y='salary', data=ceos)

<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7ff358fc97f0>


Note the outliers. To “zoom in”, let’s ignore those data points.

sns.lmplot(x='roe', y='salary', data=ceos[ceos['salary'] < 4000])

<seaborn.axisgrid.FacetGrid at 0x7ff358f69a90>


There seems to be some sort of positive correlation, as indicated by the upward-sloping line. But the fit is not good. Why? This is something that we will investigate further.