SOAN 3120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Standard Deviation, Dependent And Independent Variables, Scatter Plot

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 3120
• Professor: Andrew Hathaway

Document Summary

A regression line is a straight line that describes how a response variable y changes as an explanatory variable x changes. We often use a regression line to predict the value of y for a given value of x. The size of the slope depends on the units in which we measure the 2 variables. In most cases no line will pass through all points on a scatterplot. A good regression line makes the vertical distance of the points from the line as small as possible. Least-squares regression line: of y on x is the line that makes the sum of the squares of the vertical distances of the data points from the line as small as possible. We write y-hat in the equation of the regression line to emphasize that the. Facts about least-squares regression: line gives a predicted response y-hat to any x.