1. Statistics and Quantitative Analysis U4320
Lecture 13: Explaining Variation
Prof. Sharyn O’Halloran

2. I. Explaining Variation: R2
A. Breaking Down the Distances
Let's go back to the basics of regression analysis.
How well does the predicted line explain the variation in the independent variable money spent?

3. I. Explaining Variation: R2
Total Variation

4. I. Explaining Variation: R2
Total Deviation
Total = Explained Unexplained
Deviation Deviation Deviation
The total distance from any point to is the sum of the distance from Y to the regression line plus the distance from the regression line to .

5. I. Explaining Variation: R2
B. Sums of Squares
We can sum this equation across all the Y's and square both sides to get:

6. I. Explaining Variation: R2
1. Total Sum of Squares (SST).
The term on the left-hand side of this equation is the sum of the squared distances from all points to We call this the total variation in the Y's, or the Total Sum of Squares (SST).
2. Regression Sum of Squares
The first term on the right hand side is the sum of the squared distances from the regression line to . We call it the Regression Sum of Squares, or SSR.

7. I. Explaining Variation: R2
3. Error Sum of Squares
Finally, the last term is the sum of the squared distances from the points to the regression line. Remember, this is the quantity that least squares minimizes. We call it the Error Sum of Squares, or SSE.
We can rewrite the previous equation as:
SST = SSR + SSE.

8. I. Explaining Variation: R2
C. Definition of R2
We can use these new terms to determine how much variation is explained by the regression line.
If the points are perfectly linear, then the Error Sum of Squares is 0:

9. I. Explaining Variation: R2
Here, SSR = SST. The variance in the Y's is completely explained by the regression line.

10. I. Explaining Variation: R2
On the other hand, if there is no relation between X and Y:
Now SSR is 0 and SSE=SST. The regression line explains none of the variance in Y.

11. I. Explaining Variation: R2
3. Formula
So we can construct a useful statistic.
Take the ratio of the Regression Sum of Squares to the Total Sum of Squares:
We call this statistic R2
It represents the percent of the variation in Y explained by the regression

12. I. Explaining Variation: R2
R2 is always between 0 and 1.
For a perfectly straight line it's 1, which is perfect correlation.
For data with little relation, it's near 0.
R2 measures the explanatory power of your model.
The more of the variance in Y you can explain, the more powerful your model.

13. I. Explaining Variation: R2
D. Example
I wanted to investigate why people have confidence in what they see on TV.
1. Dependent variable
TRUSTTV = 1 if has a lot of confidence
= 2 if somewhat confidence
= 3 if the individual has no confidence.
2. Independent variables
TUBETIME = number of Hours of TV watched a week
SKOOL = years of education.
LIKEJPAN = feelings towards Japan.
YELOWSTN = attitudes whether the US should spend more on national parks.
MYSIGN = the respondents astrological sign.

14. I. Explaining Variation: R2
3. Calculating R2
a) Correlation matrix

15. I. Explaining Variation: R2
b) The first model is:
TRUSTTV = (TUBETIME)

16. I. Explaining Variation: R2
How do we calculate the Total Sum of Squares?
SST = SSR + SSE
SST = =
Now we can calculate R2:

17. I. Explaining Variation: R2
c) Each of the 4 different models has an associated R2.
Eq # 2: R2 = 0.035
Eq # 3: R = 0.039
Eq # 4 = R2 = .04

18. I. Explaining Variation: R2
F. Using R2 in Practice
1. Useful Tool
2. Measure of Unexplained Variance
3. Not a Statistical Test
4. Don't Obsess about R2
5. You can always improve R2 by adding variables

19. I. Explaining Variation: R2
G. Example
You'll notice that R2 increase every time.
No matter what variables you add you can always increase your R2.

20. II. Adjusted R2 II. Adjusted R2 A. Definition of Adjusted R2
So we'd like a measure like R2, but one that takes into account the fact that adding extra variables always increases your explanatory power.
The statistic we use for this is call the Adjusted R2, and its formula is:
So the Adjusted R2 can actually fall if the variable you add doesn't explain much of the variance.

21. II. Adjusted R2 B. Back to the Example 1. Adjusted R2
You can see that the adjusted R2 rises from equation 1 to equation 2, and from equation 2 to equation 3.
But then it falls from equation 3 to 4, when we add in the variables for national parks and the zodiac.

22. II. Adjusted R2
2. Calculating Adjusted R2
Example: Equation 2

23. II. Adjusted R2
We calculate:

24. II. Adjusted R2 C. Stepwise Regression
One strategy for model building is to add variables only if they increase your adjusted R2.
This technique is called stepwise regression.
However, I don't want to emphasize this approach to strongly. Just as people can fixate on R2 they can fixate on adjusted R2.
****IMPORTANT****
If you have a theory that suggests that certain variables are important for your analysis then include them whether or not they increase the adjusted R2.
Negative findings can be important!

25. III. F Tests III. F Tests A. When to use an F-Test?
Say you add a number of variables into a regression model and you want to see if, as a group, they are significant in explaining variation in your dependent variable Y.
The F-test tells you whether a group of variables, or even an entire model, is jointly significant.
This is in contrast to a t-test, which tells whether an individual coefficient is significantly different from zero.

26. III. F Tests B. Equations To be precise, say our original equation is:
EQ 1: Y = b0 + b1X1 + b2X2,
and we add two more variables, so the new equation is:
EQ 2: Y = b0 + b1X1 + b2X2 + b3X3 + b4X4.
We want to test the hypothesis that
H0: b3 = b4 = 0.
That is, we want to test the joint hypothesis that X3 and X4 together are not significant factors in determining Y.

27. III. F Tests C. Using Adjusted R2 First
There's an easy way to tell if these two variables are not significant.
First, run the regression without X3 and X4 in it, then run the regression with X3 and X4.
Now look at the adjusted R2's for the two regressions. If the adjusted R2 went down, then X3 and X4 are not jointly significant.
So the adjusted R2 can serve as a quick test for insignificance.

28. III. F Tests D. Calculating an F-Test 1. Ratio
If the adjusted R2 goes up, then you need to do a more complicated test, F-Test.
1. Ratio
Let regression 1 be the model without X3 and X4, and let regression 2 include X3 and X4.
The basic idea of the F statistic, then, is to compute the ratio:

29. III. F Tests
2. Correction
We have to correct for the number of independent we add.
So the complete statistic is:
Remember that k is the total number of independent variables, including the ones that you are testing and the constant.

30. III. F Tests 2. Correction (cont.)
This equation defines an F statistic with m and n-k degrees of freedom.
We write it like this:
To get critical values for the F statistic, we use a set of tables, just like for the normal and t-statistics.

31. III. F Tests
E. Example
1. Adding Extra Variables: Are a group of variables jointly significant?
Are the variables YELOWSTN and MYSIGN jointly significant?

32. III. F Tests 1. Adding Extra Variables (cont.)
a) State the null hypothesis
b) Calculate the F-statistic
Our formula for the F statistic is:

33. III. F Tests
What is SSE1 --the sum of squared errors in the first regression?
What is SSE2, the sum of squared errors in the second regression?
m = N = k = 6
The formula is:

34. III. F Tests c) Reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis?
The critical value at the 5 % level
from the table, is 3.00.
Is the F-statistic > ?
If yes, then we reject the null hypothesis that the variables are not significantly different from zero; otherwise we fail to reject.
.319 < 3.00, so we can reject the null hypothesis.

35. III. F Tests 2. Testing All Variables: Is the Model Significant?
Equation 2

36. III. F Tests
a) Hypothesis:
Again, we start with our formula:

37. III. F Tests b) Calculate F-statistic SSE2 = 182.78
SSE1 is the sum of squared errors when there are no explanatory variables at all.
If there are no explanatory variables, then SSR must be 0. In this case, SSE=SST.
So we can substitute SST for SSE1 in our formula.
SST = SSR + SSE = =
This is the number reported in your printout under the F statistic.

38. III. F Tests c) Reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis?
The critical value at the 5% level, from your table, is 3.00.
So this time we can reject the null hypothesis that b1 = b2 = 0.