Raising the bar

The disturbance term: To hide or not to hide? In an introductory Stats course, some part of the theory should be hidden. Where to draw the line is an interesting question. Here I discuss the ideas that look definitely bad to me.

How disturbing is the disturbance term?

In the main text, Agresti and Franklin never mention the disturbance term in the regression model

(1)

(it is hidden in Exercise 12.105). Instead, they write the equation for the mean that follows from (1) under the standard assumption . This would be fine if the exposition stopped right there. However, one has to explain the random source of variability in . On p. 583 the authors say: "The probability distribution of y values at a fixed value of x is a conditional distribution. At each value of x, there is a conditional distribution of y values. A regression model also describes these distributions. An additional parameter σ describes the standard deviation of each conditional distribution."

Further, Figure 12.4 illustrates distributions of errors at different points and asks: "What do the bell-shaped curves around the line at x = 12 and at x = 16 represent?"

Figure 12.4. Illustration of error distributions

Besides, explanations of heteroscedasticity and of the residual sum of squares are impossible without explicitly referring to the disturbance term.

Attributing a regression property to the correlation is not good

On p.589 I encountered a statement that puzzled me: "An important property of the correlation is that at any particular x value, the predicted value of y is relatively closer to its mean than x is to its mean. If an x value is a certain number of standard deviations from its mean, then the predicted y is r times that many standard deviations from its mean."

Firstly, this is a verbal interpretation of some formula, so why not give the formula itself? How good must be a student to guess what is behind the verbal formulation?

Secondly, as I stressed in this post, the correlation coefficient does not entail any prediction about the magnitude of a change in one variable caused by a change in another. The above statement about the predicted value of y must be a property of regression. Attributing a regression property to the correlation is not in the best interests of those who want to study Stats at a more advanced level.

Thirdly, I felt challenged to see something new in the area I thought I knew everything about. So here is the derivation. By definition, the fitted value is

(2)

where the hats stand for estimators. The fitted line passes through the point :

(3)

(this will be proved elsewhere). Subtracting (3) from (2) we get

(4)

(using equation (4) from this post)

It is helpful to rewrite (4) in a more symmetric form:

(5)

This is the equation we need. Suppose an x value is a certain number of standard deviations from its mean: . Plug this into (5) to get , that is, the predicted y is times that many standard deviations from its mean.