Create, Interpret, and Use a Linear Regression Model in R

In my last post, we looked at how to create a correlation matrix in R. Specifically, we used data pulled from the web to see which variables were most highly correlated with an automobile’s fuel economy. Suppose, however, that we are trying to guess the fuel economy of a new car without actually having driven it. Is there a way for us to use the things we do know about the car to predict how many miles per gallon it will get?

When you’re trying to figure out how multiple variables interact to produce an effect in another variable, you’ll want to perform a regression analysis. There are many programs in which you can do this–SAS, SPSS, Stata, and even to a limited extent in Microsoft Excel. Heck, if you’ve got enough time to kill and brain power to exhaust, you can even do it with a pencil and paper.

Of course, given the nature of this blog, we’re going to perform a simple regression analysis using R. And it’s surprisingly fairly simple to generate the output. Let’s have a look at some code…

motorcars <- read.csv("https://vincentarelbundock.github.io/Rdatasets/csv/datasets/mtcars.csv", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

head(motorcars)

The first thing we’ll do, as in many other situations, is read in some data and take a look at it. When we import the “motorcars” dataset and call the head() function on it, here’s what we get…

Now is the part where we use our subject matter expertise and basic human experience to evaluate which variables we think may influence the mpg of a particular vehicle. (Here’s the document explaining what the variable names mean). For argument’s sake, let’s say we determine the displacement (disp), the weight (wt), and the horsepower (hp) to be the only variables we think could really have an effect on the fuel economy of the car. So, those are the ones we decide to put into our model. Let’s look at the code on how to build the model…

mc_model <- lm(motorcars$mpg ~ motorcars$disp + motorcars$wt + motorcars$hp)

summary(mc_model)

So, we actually create the model with the lm() function. Inside the function, we use the basic framework of “the independent variable (the one we’re trying to predict) is equal to variable1 + variable2 + variable3, and so on…” However, instead of the “=” sign, we use the “~” sign. Then, we assign the model to a named object–in this case “mc_model.”

Once, we’ve created the model and assigned a name to it, we can call the summary() function on it to get an overview of the results. Here’s what the output looks like for the model we’ve created…

Now, for simplicity’s sake, I’m just going to interpret a few components of the model. The first thing you’ll want to look at is the “p-value” in the bottom right corner of this summary. This number tells you whether or not the model is “statistically significant,” given your criteria. Essentially, it’s the probability that the outcome of the model is due to random chance. Generally, practitioners use 0.05 as a threshold–such that anything less than that is deemed acceptable. So, we can see that our model as a whole is statistically significant–or usable for making predictions.

Next, let’s look at the far right column of the table labeled “Coefficients,” with the header “Pr(>|t|).” This column contains the “p values” of each individual variable we are considering. Even if the model as a whole is statistically significant, there still may be some variables within it that are not. In this case, we can see that the “displacement” variable is not statistically significant by virtually any measure. So, we can decide to throw that out of our model. So, going forward, let’s look only at the other two variables: “weight” (wt) and “horsepower” (hp).

The last thing we’ll need to look at for our purposes is the “Estimate” column of the “Coefficients” table. Ignoring the “motorcars$disp” variable, we’ll look at the other three. The “Intercept” is what the model begins with before weight and horsepower are taken into consideration. Or, given the information in the model, it’s the miles per gallon the car will get if it has no weight and no horsepower.

For the “motorcars$wt” and “motorcars$hp” variables, you’ll multiply the estimate by each unit of weight and horsepower, respectively. Then, you’ll add the results together with the “Intercept” to conclude how many miles per gallon your car will get. Here’s the formula for our model:

miles per gallon = 37.105505 + (weight[in 1000s] * -3.800891) + (horsepower * -0.031157)

So, let’s say we have a car that weights 2000 pounds and has 100 horsepower. How many miles per gallon can we expect it to get? If we compute this in R, here’s what it will look like…

So, given our model, we can expect a car that weights 2000 pounds and has 100 horsepower to get about 26.4 miles per gallon.

Now, let’s suppose we have a huge list of cars on which we want to run this model. It would be tedious to have to type in those numbers over and over again. Is there anything we can do about it?

Of course, there is. We can create a function that has our dependent variables (weight and horsepower) as inputs. Then, all we have to do is put in the weight and horsepower of each car and the miles per gallon will return as a result. Here’s what the code for that looks like:

mc_fun <- function(weight,horsepower) {
37.105505 + (weight * -3.800891) + (horsepower * -0.031157)
}

args(mc_fun)

mc_fun(2,100)
mc_fun(2.5,150)
mc_fun(3,200)
mc_fun(5,350)

Now, whatever combination of weight and horsepower we input into the mc_fun function, we’ll get an output of miles per gallon. To check the order in which you’ll input the variables, use the args() function.

In the code above, I’ve included four examples–increasing in weight and horsepower. I start with our original example of a 2000 pound car with 100 horsepower and go all the way up to a 5000 pound car with 350 horsepower. Based on our model, we can expect the fuel economy to decrease as the weight and horsepower increases. Does this actually happen? Let’s look at the output to find out…

Consistent with our original formula example, a car with a weight of 2000 pounds and 100 horsepower gets 26.4 miles per gallon. If, however, we’ve got our hearts set on buying that massive yet agile tank of an automobile weighing 5000 pounds and getting 350 horsepower, we’ll have to settle for a measly 7.2 miles per gallon.

If we’re set on buying the boat, we might want to live very close to a gas station…