The following labs are from James, Witten, Hastie, and Tibshirani’s An Introduction to Statistical Learning, pp. 115-159.

We load the libraries to be used.

library(ISLR); library(MASS); data(Boston)

Non-linear Transformation of the Predictors

Non-linear transformation of individual predictor variables is largely akin to the interaction of different predictor variables to create another predictor, so the placement of this portion of the tutorial is somewhat arbitrary.

lm.fit2 <- lm(medv~lstat+I(lstat^2),data=Boston)
summary(lm.fit2)
## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = medv ~ lstat + I(lstat^2), data = Boston)
## 
## Residuals:
##      Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max 
## -15.2834  -3.8313  -0.5295   2.3095  25.4148 
## 
## Coefficients:
##              Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept) 42.862007   0.872084   49.15   <2e-16 ***
## lstat       -2.332821   0.123803  -18.84   <2e-16 ***
## I(lstat^2)   0.043547   0.003745   11.63   <2e-16 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 5.524 on 503 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.6407, Adjusted R-squared:  0.6393 
## F-statistic: 448.5 on 2 and 503 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

We analyze the variance of the dataset via the anova() function, i.e., we use anova() to quantify the extent to which the quadratic fit outperforms the linear fit.

lm.fit <- lm(medv~lstat,data=Boston)
anova(lm.fit,lm.fit2)
## Analysis of Variance Table
## 
## Model 1: medv ~ lstat
## Model 2: medv ~ lstat + I(lstat^2)
##   Res.Df   RSS Df Sum of Sq     F    Pr(>F)    
## 1    504 19472                                 
## 2    503 15347  1    4125.1 135.2 < 2.2e-16 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

We produce some plots to evaluate the lm.fit2.

par(mfrow=c(2,2))
plot(lm.fit2)

We also examine the fit quality of higher-order transformations.

lm.fit5<-lm(medv~poly(lstat,5), data=Boston)
summary(lm.fit5)
## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = medv ~ poly(lstat, 5), data = Boston)
## 
## Residuals:
##      Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max 
## -13.5433  -3.1039  -0.7052   2.0844  27.1153 
## 
## Coefficients:
##                  Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept)       22.5328     0.2318  97.197  < 2e-16 ***
## poly(lstat, 5)1 -152.4595     5.2148 -29.236  < 2e-16 ***
## poly(lstat, 5)2   64.2272     5.2148  12.316  < 2e-16 ***
## poly(lstat, 5)3  -27.0511     5.2148  -5.187 3.10e-07 ***
## poly(lstat, 5)4   25.4517     5.2148   4.881 1.42e-06 ***
## poly(lstat, 5)5  -19.2524     5.2148  -3.692 0.000247 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 5.215 on 500 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.6817, Adjusted R-squared:  0.6785 
## F-statistic: 214.2 on 5 and 500 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

The summary suggests that including additional, higher-order polynomials, at least up to the fifth order, improves the fit.

We can also transform predictors in other ways, i.e., we’re not limited to simple higher-order versions of predictors, but can apply, for instance, a log transformation.

summary(lm(medv~log(rm),data=Boston))
## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = medv ~ log(rm), data = Boston)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -19.487  -2.875  -0.104   2.837  39.816 
## 
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept)  -76.488      5.028  -15.21   <2e-16 ***
## log(rm)       54.055      2.739   19.73   <2e-16 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 6.915 on 504 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.4358, Adjusted R-squared:  0.4347 
## F-statistic: 389.3 on 1 and 504 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

Qualitative Predictors

We now leave the Boston dataset and examine the Carseats data. The objective is to predict “Sales” in 400 places based on a number of predictors.

data(Carseats)
names(Carseats)
##  [1] "Sales"       "CompPrice"   "Income"      "Advertising" "Population" 
##  [6] "Price"       "ShelveLoc"   "Age"         "Education"   "Urban"      
## [11] "US"

The Carseats dataset includes qualitative, or class, variables, e.g., the “Shelveloc,” which indicate shelving quality for the merchandise. The following model fits a multiple regression, which includes interaction terms.

lm.fit=lm(Sales~.+Income:Advertising+Price:Age,data=Carseats)
summary(lm.fit)
## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Sales ~ . + Income:Advertising + Price:Age, data = Carseats)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -2.9208 -0.7503  0.0177  0.6754  3.3413 
## 
## Coefficients:
##                      Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept)         6.5755654  1.0087470   6.519 2.22e-10 ***
## CompPrice           0.0929371  0.0041183  22.567  < 2e-16 ***
## Income              0.0108940  0.0026044   4.183 3.57e-05 ***
## Advertising         0.0702462  0.0226091   3.107 0.002030 ** 
## Population          0.0001592  0.0003679   0.433 0.665330    
## Price              -0.1008064  0.0074399 -13.549  < 2e-16 ***
## ShelveLocGood       4.8486762  0.1528378  31.724  < 2e-16 ***
## ShelveLocMedium     1.9532620  0.1257682  15.531  < 2e-16 ***
## Age                -0.0579466  0.0159506  -3.633 0.000318 ***
## Education          -0.0208525  0.0196131  -1.063 0.288361    
## UrbanYes            0.1401597  0.1124019   1.247 0.213171    
## USYes              -0.1575571  0.1489234  -1.058 0.290729    
## Income:Advertising  0.0007510  0.0002784   2.698 0.007290 ** 
## Price:Age           0.0001068  0.0001333   0.801 0.423812    
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 1.011 on 386 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.8761, Adjusted R-squared:  0.8719 
## F-statistic:   210 on 13 and 386 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

Use the contrasts() function with a categorical variable as the argument to return the coding that R uses in assigning dummy variables.

attach(Carseats)
contrasts(ShelveLoc)
##        Good Medium
## Bad       0      0
## Good      1      0
## Medium    0      1

Notice the higher coefficient associated with ShelveLocGood, which R created, is higher than that of ShelveLocMedium, which makes sense since better shelving should lead to higher Sales.