# Guide to a Career in Data Science

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Data Science is a buzzword in today’s world. Data engineers, data scientists, and data programmers often talk about data science. To put it in simple words, Data Science is an interdisciplinary field where we explore, research, and extract some knowledge out of the structured and unstructured data.

The process of exploration, research, and extraction involves a significant scientific method or principle, relative algorithms, and various statistical mathematics to perform on vast amounts of data to get meaningful insights from it. This data that is extracted and further used by companies or organizations to draw insights for their business goals or solutions.

Every organization today uses data science directly or indirectly, be it giant conglomerates across industries ranging from aerospace to banking and even government bodies.

Applications of Data Science

## Data Science Components

• Statistics: Statistics is field of Mathematics, which helps in quantifying large amount of numerical data and helps in analyzing meaningful outcomes.
• Visualization: Visualization is the graphical representation of data in graphical format like Line chart, Pie chart, and many more so that it’s easy to understand the trends and patterns which are also used for the purpose of building predictive models.
• AlgorithmsThere are many algorithms which support various business problems like predictions, classifications, segmentations, recommendations, object detection and image classifications.
• Data engineering: Data engineering is a separate field, but the work of Data Engineers helps Data Scientists get structure and filtered data. Extraction, Load and Transformation (ETL) or Extractions, Transformation & Load (ETL) forms a key activity under data engineering.

## Prerequisites to a career in Data Science

There are certain prerequisites required for an individual to start a career in Data Science which will be discussed below.

Prerequisites to a career in Data Science

As denoted in the above graph, Data Science is the combination of multiple fields, however, few of them are very prominent and are required as prerequisites like Mathematics, Computer Science basic, and certain knowledge on Domain expertise.

As Data Scientists deal with the analytics of both structured and unstructured records, in both numeric and alphabetic format, some need to have basic understanding of statistics because most of the analytical work requires statistical approach to solve the data science problem.

For implementing the solution while applying a statistical approach, one needs to have a basic understanding of programming languages like Python and R which are very prominent for Data Science.

Domain expertise will help gather a deep understanding of certain businesses like banking and finance to solve related use cases. The first step in Data Science is data discovery on a specific data set, which in turn gives access to data on the specific domain or business. This data extracted is then used by the data scientist to project useful insights about the industry that helps business leaders take or make appropriate strategies to benefit the overall business.

Apart from this there are other fields like Machine Learning, which need an in-depth knowledge of core computer science topics like data structure and algorithms that are designed specially to mine the data, cluster the data, and perform other operations of Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is one of the fields where one needs to have a good grasp of statistical mathematics and core computer science concepts. As a beginner, it can be quite challenging to gain expertise in each of these fields because Data Science is a very vast field.

## Data Science Life cycle

Data Science Life cycle

Having a business understanding is also one of the vital characteristics of data science. Data scientists need to understand the purpose of their role and also to ask the right questions.

For example, in the banking domain, if the leadership team wants to do the prediction and forecasting of their banking product, the data scientist needs to have a clear understanding of the banking business model and their relevant products, how this product works, and what kind of data or information is associated with this. They need to understand the accurate customer details to look for, how this data is classified, and how one can use the same to make a prediction. Similarly, many other examples can be applied to different domains or industries where business knowledge is required to predict and identify the right customers.

### Data Collection

Data discovery is one of the crucial steps in Data Science and one needs to understand the source of data. This data source usually varies for different domains.

Let’s take the example of the banking business, here, the data is generally saved in a data warehouse or RDBMS or in a private cloud, and to gather this, one requires approval as it is highly classified data. Another example would be of the online retail business, the data for this is usually available on the web or online media using which one can understand consumer behavior and what kind of products they are interested in. In a nutshell, data scientists need to know how to gather data from different sources.

### Data Preparation

Data extraction, also called ETL, is how one extracts, transforms and loads the data. The correct data from the source needs to be extracted and standard transforms are performed. This includes data cleaning, which is the removal of unwanted records that do not have any relevance to data analytics; and data standardization, which is preparing the data according to the required format by various machine learning algorithms.

### Data Modeling

In data modeling, data scientists use a statistical approach to get trends, apply data mining, classification, clustering, and other advanced tools like machine learning, deep learning, and AI-based algorithms.

One of the many things you might need to do in modeling is to reduce the dimensionality of your records set. Not all your features or values are important for predicting your model. What you want to do is to select the relevant ones that contribute to the prediction of results. There are a few duties we can perform in modeling. We can also teach models to perform classification of emails you obtained as “Inbox” and “Spam” using logistic regressions. We can also forecast values using linear regressions. We can use modeling of organization information to apprehend the logic behind those clusters. For example, as for an e commerce institution to recognize the behavior of its users on its website, it needs to identify organizations of record points with clustering algorithms like k-way or hierarchical clustering.

Let’s take the example clustering algorithms, which are generally used to explore the trends and create an individual group from the huge volume of dataset, these individual groups are formed based on clustering algorithms so that each group has individual trends which are analyzed by the Data scientist. An Machine Learning expert can go beyond that and perform more complex algorithms on the same and get a prediction beyond that. Generally, they use the predictive analysis algorithm and supervised learning algorithm which is performed on high volume of historical data and perform the iterative train on the model, which is further used to build the prediction.

### Interpreting Data

Now we got the resultant dataset, so now the next step is how to interpret the resulting data, so that management can understand and take the executive decision accordingly. Generally, the interpretation happens by exploring it and constructing graphs. When you are dealing with massive volumes of statistics, visualization is the first-class way to explore and communicate your findings and is the next segment of your records analytics project. Now the big catch here is, how to communicate to the leadership or management team and effectively convey the result is one in all the most underrated abilities a data scientist can have. While several data scientists ought to have the ability to communicate with other teams and effectively translate their work for maximum impact. This set of skills is frequently called ‘information storytelling.’ You take the statistics on the present-day possibilities that the income crew is pursuing, run it through your model, and rank them in a spreadsheet within the order of most to least likely to convert. You provide the spreadsheet for your VP of Sales.

### Practical

In this session, we will talk about some of the prominent algorithms, which are implemented in most of the Data science projects.

#### Linear regression

Linear regression is one of the highly adaptable algorithms when it comes to the prediction, Linear regression is used in supervised learning, which comes under the Machine learning use case.

This algorithm works on iterative approach where we are targeting the model values based on an independent dataset and calculate the closer, which thus forms the linear equation. In layman terms, this helps to form the relationship between input values and target output. As stated earlier, this algorithm helps to do the predictive analysis. Below is the equation for the same.

Y= MX+C

Where, y= Dependent variable

X= independent variable

M= slope

C= intercept.

### K-Means Clustering

K-means clustering, an unsupervised learning algorithm, is another prominent algorithm of machine learning, which generally performs clustering using the historical dataset. This algorithm is useful in instances when we have a data set of items to be categorized into groups. This method requires a good understanding of statistical mathematics.

## Application of Data Science

Thanks to faster computing and cheaper storage, we can now predict outcomes in minutes that would take several human hours to process. In this section, we’ve rounded up seven examples of data science at work, across industries from gaming to healthcare.

• ### Image and Speech Recognition

Image reorganization is generally applied in social media when the algorithm helps the user match and find friends for any given suggestion. Speech recognition is mostly seen on mobile handsets like SIRI for the iPhone, where you get to give instructions to SIRI to perform a task.

• ### Gaming

Machine learning algorithms are used widely in gaming to capture and analyze the user experience and enrich features and gaming functionalities.

• ### Internet Search

Internet search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo capture user behavior and refine the search data as per the keyword so that the most frequently visited page ranks on top.

• ### Transport or Maps navigation system

Google maps show many routes from point A (source) to point B (target). When a user finds a new way, Google map trains the model again, so that it can now add on a new route. The map navigation too detects the pattern of driving and calculates the time frame to reach the destination.

• ### Healthcare

Healthcare has seen some othe most prominent implementations of Data Science. Drug discovery, tumor detection, breast cancer detection, medical image analysis, and many more key applications have demonstrated the importance of data science in this field.

• ### Recommendation Systems

Recommendation systems are one of the more profitable systems, mostly used by online retail companies to analyze the user’s purchasing behaviorThe data gathered helps the system come up with suggestions of relevant products that the customer may be interested to purchase.

• ### Banking and Finance

The Banking and financial institutions predominately apply the Data science approach to calculate the credit score, while providing the loans to customers. This helps banks and financial institutions to minimize the risk of non-paymentA similar approach is adopted by credit card companies as well.

Conclusion

The Data Science field is one of the booming technologies, and as per Gartner prediction the scope of this field will be there till the next 10-15 years and many discoveries will be taking birth in the field. Data Science can be used to increase productivity in many fields and inventions in the manufacturing field and self-driving cars only stand to prove this right.

However, the negative consequence of this is that it will proportionally decrease human intervention which can cause great unemployment. Finding a balance between how much automation or artificial intelligence is requiredcan leverage both human and artificial intelligence to go hand-in-hand. With the way data science is growing presently, it is evident that there will always be a scope for a data scientist as every business is looking for growth.

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## Machine Learning Model Evaluation

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Machine Learning Model Evaluation

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## What is Linear Regression in Machine Learning

Machine Learning, being a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI), has been playing a dominant role in our daily lives. Data science engineers and developers working in various domains are widely using machine learning algorithms to make their tasks simpler and life easier. For example, certain machine learning algorithms enable Google Maps to find the fastest route to our destinations, allow Tesla to make driverless cars, help Amazon to generate almost 35% of their annual income, AccuWeather to get the weather forecast of 3.5 million locations weeks in advance, Facebook to automatically detect faces and suggest tags and so on.In statistics and machine learning, linear regression is one of the most popular and well understood algorithms. Most data science enthusiasts and machine learning  fanatics begin their journey with linear regression algorithms. In this article, we will look into how linear regression algorithm works and how it can be efficiently used in your machine learning projects to build better models.Linear Regression is one of the machine learning algorithms where the result is predicted by the use of known parameters which are correlated with the output. It is used to predict values within a continuous range rather than trying to classify them into categories. The known parameters are used to make a continuous and constant slope which is used to predict the unknown or the result.What is a Regression Problem?Majority of the machine learning algorithms fall under the supervised learning category. It is the process where an algorithm is used to predict a result based on the previously entered values and the results generated from them. Suppose we have an input variable ‘x’ and an output variable ‘y’ where y is a function of x (y=f{x}). Supervised learning reads the value of entered variable ‘x’ and the resulting variable ‘y’ so that it can use those results to later predict a highly accurate output data of ‘y’ from the entered value of ‘x’. A regression problem is when the resulting variable contains a real or a continuous value. It tries to draw the line of best fit from the data gathered from a number of points.For example, which of these is a regression problem?How much gas will I spend if I drive for 100 miles?What is the nationality of a person?What is the age of a person?Which is the closest planet to the Sun?Predicting the amount of gas to be spent and the age of a person are regression problems. Predicting nationality is categorical and the closest planet to the Sun is discrete.What is Linear Regression?Let’s say we have a dataset which contains information about the relationship between ‘number of hours studied’ and ‘marks obtained’. A number of students have been observed and their hours of study along with their grades are recorded. This will be our training data. Our goal is to design a model that can predict the marks if number of hours studied is provided. Using the training data, a regression line is obtained which will give minimum error. This linear equation is then used to apply for a new data. That is, if we give the number of hours studied by a student as an input, our model should be able to predict their mark with minimum error.Hypothesis of Linear RegressionThe linear regression model can be represented by the following equation:where,Y is the predicted valueθ₀ is the bias term.θ₁,…,θn are the model parametersx₁, x₂,…,xn are the feature values.The above hypothesis can also be represented byWhere, θ is the model’s parameter vector including the bias term θ₀; x is the feature vector with x₀ =1Y (pred) = b0 + b1*xThe values b0 and b1 must be chosen so that the error is minimum. If sum of squared error is taken as a metric to evaluate the model, then the goal is to obtain a line that best reduces the error.If we don’t square the error, then the positive and negative points will cancel each other out.For a model with one predictor,Exploring ‘b1’If b1 > 0, then x (predictor) and y(target) have a positive relationship. That is an increase in x will increase y.If b1 < 0, then x (predictor) and y(target) have a negative relationship. That is an increase in x will decrease y.Exploring ‘b0’If the model does not include x=0, then the prediction will become meaningless with only b0. For example, we have a dataset that relates height(x) and weight(y). Taking x=0 (that is height as 0), will make the equation have only b0 value which is completely meaningless as in real-time height and weight can never be zero. This resulted due to considering the model values beyond its scope.If the model includes value 0, then ‘b0’ will be the average of all predicted values when x=0. But, setting zero for all the predictor variables is often impossible.The value of b0 guarantees that the residual will have mean zero. If there is no ‘b0’ term, then the regression will be forced to pass over the origin. Both the regression coefficient and prediction will be biased.How does Linear Regression work?Let’s look at a scenario where linear regression might be useful: losing weight. Let us consider that there’s a connection between how many calories you take in and how much you weigh; regression analysis can help you understand that connection. Regression analysis will provide you with a relation which can be visualized into a graph in order to make predictions about your data. For example, if you’ve been putting on weight over the last few years, it can predict how much you’ll weigh in the next ten years if you continue to consume the same amount of calories and burn them at the same rate.The goal of regression analysis is to create a trend line based on the data you have gathered. This then allows you to determine whether other factors apart from the amount of calories consumed affect your weight, such as the number of hours you sleep, work pressure, level of stress, type of exercises you do etc. Before taking into account, we need to look at these factors and attributes and determine whether there is a correlation between them. Linear Regression can then be used to draw a trend line which can then be used to confirm or deny the relationship between attributes. If the test is done over a long time duration, extensive data can be collected and the result can be evaluated more accurately. By the end of this article we will build a model which looks like the below picture i.e, determine a line which best fits the data.How do we determine the best fit line?The best fit line is considered to be the line for which the error between the predicted values and the observed values is minimum. It is also called the regression line and the errors are also known as residuals. The figure shown below shows the residuals. It can be visualized by the vertical lines from the observed data value to the regression line.When to use Linear Regression?Linear Regression’s power lies in its simplicity, which means that it can be used to solve problems across various fields. At first, the data collected from the observations need to be collected and plotted along a line. If the difference between the predicted value and the result is almost the same, we can use linear regression for the problem.Assumptions in linear regressionIf you are planning to use linear regression for your problem then there are some assumptions you need to consider:The relation between the dependent and independent variables should be almost linear.The data is homoscedastic, meaning the variance between the results should not be too much.The results obtained from an observation should not be influenced by the results obtained from the previous observation.The residuals should be normally distributed. This assumption means that the probability density function of the residual values is normally distributed at each independent value.You can determine whether your data meets these conditions by plotting it and then doing a bit of digging into its structure.Few properties of Regression LineHere are a few features a regression line has:Regression passes through the mean of independent variable (x) as well as mean of the dependent variable (y).Regression line minimizes the sum of “Square of Residuals”. That’s why the method of Linear Regression is known as “Ordinary Least Square (OLS)”. We will discuss more in detail about Ordinary Least Square later on.B1 explains the change in Y with a change in x  by one unit. In other words, if we increase the value of ‘x’ it will result in a change in value of Y.Finding a Linear Regression lineLet’s say we want to predict ‘y’ from ‘x’ given in the following table and assume they are correlated as “y=B0+B1∗x”xyPredicted 'y'12Β0+B1∗121Β0+B1∗233Β0+B1∗346Β0+B1∗459Β0+B1∗5611Β0+B1∗6713Β0+B1∗7815Β0+B1∗8917Β0+B1∗91020Β0+B1∗10where,Std. Dev. of x3.02765Std. Dev. of y6.617317Mean of x5.5Mean of y9.7Correlation between x & y0.989938If the Residual Sum of Square (RSS) is differentiated with respect to B0 & B1 and the results equated to zero, we get the following equation:B1 = Correlation * (Std. Dev. of y/ Std. Dev. of x)B0 = Mean(Y) – B1 * Mean(X)Putting values from table 1 into the above equations,B1 = 2.64B0 = -2.2Hence, the least regression equation will become –Y = -2.2 + 2.64*xxY - ActualY - Predicted120.44213.08335.72468.36591161113.6471316.2881518.9291721.56102024.2As there are only 10 data points, the results are not too accurate but if we see the correlation between the predicted and actual line, it has turned out to be very high; both the lines are moving almost together and here is the graph for visualizing our predicted values:Model PerformanceAfter the model is built, if we see that the difference in the values of the predicted and actual data is not much, it is considered to be a good model and can be used to make future predictions. The amount that we consider “not much” entirely depends on the task you want to perform and to what percentage the variation in data can be handled. Here are a few metric tools we can use to calculate error in the model-R – Square (R2)Total Sum of Squares (TSS): total sum of squares (TSS) is a quantity that appears as part of a standard way of presenting results of such an analysis. Sum of squares is a measure of how a data set varies around a central number (like the mean). The Total Sum of Squares tells how much variation there is in the dependent variable.TSS = Σ (Y – Mean[Y])2Residual Sum of Squares (RSS): The residual sum of squares tells you how much of the dependent variable’s variation your model did not explain. It is the sum of the squared differences between the actual Y and the predicted Y.RSS = Σ (Y – f[Y])2(TSS – RSS) measures the amount of variability in the response that is explained by performing the regression.Properties of R2R2 always ranges between 0 to 1.R2 of 0 means that there is no correlation between the dependent and the independent variable.R2 of 1 means the dependent variable can be predicted from the independent variable without any error. An R2 between 0 and 1 indicates the extent to which the dependent variable is predictable. An R2 of 0.20 means that there is 20% of the variance in Y is predictable from X; an R2 of 0.40 means that 40% is predictable; and so on.Root Mean Square Error (RMSE)Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) is the standard deviation of the residuals (prediction errors). The formula for calculating RMSE is:Where N : Total number of observationsWhen standardized observations are used as RMSE inputs, there is a direct relationship with the correlation coefficient. For example, if the correlation coefficient is 1, the RMSE will be 0, because all of the points lie on the regression line (and therefore there are no errors).Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE)There are certain limitations to the use of RMSE, so analysts prefer MAPE over RMSE which gives error in terms of percentages so that different models can be considered for the task and see how they perform. Formula for calculating MAPE can be written as:Where N : Total number of observationsFeature SelectionFeature selection is the automatic selection of attributes for your data that are most relevant to the predictive model you are working on. It seeks to reduce the number of attributes in the dataset by eliminating the features which are not required for the model construction. Feature selection does not totally eliminate an attribute which is considered for the model, rather it mutes that particular characteristic and works with the features which affects the model.Feature selection method aids your mission to create an accurate predictive model. It helps you by choosing features that will give you as good or better accuracy whilst requiring less data. Feature selection methods can be used to identify and remove unnecessary, irrelevant and redundant attributes from the data that do not contribute to the accuracy of the model or may even decrease the accuracy of the model. Having fewer attributes is desirable because it reduces the complexity of the model, and a simpler model is easier to understand, explain and to work with.Feature Selection Algorithms:Filter Method: This method involves assigning scores to individual features and ranking them. The features that have very little to almost no impact are removed from consideration while constructing the model.Wrapper Method: Wrapper method is quite similar to Filter method except the fact that it considers attributes in a group i.e. a number of attributes are taken and checked whether they are having an impact on the model and if not another combination is applied.Embedded Method: Embedded method is the best and most accurate of all the algorithms. It learns the features that affect the model while the model is being constructed and takes into consideration only those features. The most common type of embedded feature selection methods are regularization methods.Cost FunctionCost function helps to figure out the best possible plots which can be used to draw the line of best fit for the data points. As we want to reduce the error of the resulting value we change the process of finding out the actual result to a process which can reduce the error between the predicted value and the actual value.Here, J is the cost function.The above function is made in this format to calculate the error difference between the predicted values and the plotted values. We take the square of the summation of all the data points and divide it by the total number of data points. This cost function J is also called the Mean Squared Error (MSE) function. Using this MSE function we are going to predict values such that the MSE value settles at the minima, reducing the cost function.Gradient DescentGradient Descent is an optimization algorithm that helps machine learning models to find out paths to a minimum value using repeated steps. Gradient descent is used to minimize a function so that it gives the lowest output of that function. This function is called the Loss Function. The loss function shows us how much error is produced by the machine learning model compared to actual results. Our aim should be to lower the cost function as much as possible. One way of achieving a low cost function is by the process of gradient descent. Complexity of some equations makes it difficult to use, partial derivative of the cost function with respect to the considered parameter can provide optimal coefficient value. You may refer to the article on Gradient Descent for Machine Learning.Simple Linear RegressionOptimization is a big part of machine learning and almost every machine learning algorithm has an optimization technique at its core for increased efficiency. Gradient Descent is such an optimization algorithm used to find values of coefficients of a function that minimizes the cost function. Gradient Descent is best applied when the solution cannot be obtained by analytical methods (linear algebra) and must be obtained by an optimization technique.Residual Analysis: Simple linear regression models the relationship between the magnitude of one variable and that of a second—for example, as x increases, y also increases. Or as x increases, y decreases. Correlation is another way to measure how two variables are related. The models done by simple linear regression estimate or try to predict the actual result but most often they deviate from the actual result. Residual analysis is used to calculate by how much the estimated value has deviated from the actual result.Null Hypothesis and p-value: During feature selection, null hypothesis is used to find which attributes will not affect the result of the model. Hypothesis tests are used to test the validity of a claim that is made about a particular attribute of the model. This claim that’s on trial, in essence, is called the null hypothesis. A p-value helps to determine the significance of the results. p-value is a number between 0 and 1 and is interpreted in the following way:A small p-value (less than 0.05) indicates a strong evidence against the null hypothesis, so the null hypothesis is to be rejected.A large p-value (greater than 0.05) indicates weak evidence against the null hypothesis, so the null hypothesis is to be considered.p-value very close to the cut-off (equal to 0.05) is considered to be marginal (could go either way). In this case, the p-value should be provided to the readers so that they can draw their own conclusions.Ordinary Least SquareOrdinary Least Squares (OLS), also known as Ordinary least squares regression or least squared errors regression is a type of linear least squares method for estimating the unknown parameters in a linear regression model. OLS chooses the parameters for a linear function, the goal of which is to minimize the sum of the squares of the difference of the observed variables and the dependent variables i.e. it tries to attain a relationship between them. There are two types of relationships that may occur: linear and curvilinear. A linear relationship is a straight line that is drawn through the central tendency of the points; whereas a curvilinear relationship is a curved line. Association between the variables are depicted by using a scatter plot. The relationship could be positive or negative, and result variation also differs in strength.The advantage of using Ordinary Least Squares regression is that it can be easily interpreted and is highly compatible with recent computers’ built-in algorithms from linear algebra. It can be used to apply to problems with lots of independent variables which can efficiently conveyed to thousands of data points. In Linear Regression, OLS is used to estimate the unknown parameters by creating a model which will minimize the sum of the squared errors between the observed data and the predicted one.Let us simulate some data and look at how the predicted values (Yₑ) differ from the actual value (Y):import pandas as pd import numpy as np from matplotlib import pyplot as plt # Generate 'random' data np.random.seed(0) X = 2.5 * np.random.randn(100) + 1.5   # Array of 100 values with mean = 1.5, stddev = 2.5 res = 0.5 * np.random.randn(100)         # Generate 100 residual terms y = 2 + 0.3 * X + res                   # Actual values of Y # Create pandas dataframe to store our X and y values df = pd.DataFrame(     {'X': X,       'y': y} ) # Show the first five rows of our dataframe df.head()XY05.9101314.71461512.5003932.07623823.9468452.54881137.1022334.61536846.1688953.264107To estimate y using the OLS method, we need to calculate xmean and ymean, the covariance of X and y (xycov), and the variance of X (xvar) before we can determine the values for alpha and beta.# Calculate the mean of X and y xmean = np.mean(X) ymean = np.mean(y) # Calculate the terms needed for the numator and denominator of beta df['xycov'] = (df['X'] - xmean) * (df['y'] - ymean) df['xvar'] = (df['X'] - xmean)**2 # Calculate beta and alpha beta = df['xycov'].sum() / df['xvar'].sum() alpha = ymean - (beta * xmean) print(f'alpha = {alpha}') print(f'beta = {beta}')alpha = 2.0031670124623426 beta = 0.3229396867092763Now that we have an estimate for alpha and beta, we can write our model as Yₑ = 2.003 + 0.323 X, and make predictions:ypred = alpha + beta * XLet’s plot our prediction ypred against the actual values of y, to get a better visual understanding of our model.# Plot regression against actual data plt.figure(figsize=(12, 6)) plt.plot(X, ypred) # regression line plt.plot(X, y, 'ro')   # scatter plot showing actual data plt.title('Actual vs Predicted') plt.xlabel('X') plt.ylabel('y') plt.show()The blue line in the above graph is our line of best fit, Yₑ = 2.003 + 0.323 X.  If you observe the graph carefully, you will notice that there is a linear relationship between X and Y. Using this model, we can predict Y from any values of X. For example, for X = 8,Yₑ = 2.003 + 0.323 (8) = 4.587RegularizationRegularization is a type of regression that is used to decrease the coefficient estimates down to zero. This helps to eliminate the data points that don’t actually represent the true properties of the model, but have appeared by random chance. The process is done by identifying the points which have deviated from the line of best-fit by a large extent. Earlier we saw that to estimate the regression coefficients β in the least squares method, we must minimize the term Residual Sum of Squares (RSS). Let the RSS equation in this case be:The general linear regression model can be expressed using a condensed formula:Here, β=[β0 ,β1, ….. βp]The RSS value will adjust the coefficient, β based on the training data. If the resulting data deviates too much from the training data, then the estimated coefficients won’t generalize well to the future data. This is where regularization comes in and shrinks or regularizes these learned estimates towards zero.Ridge regressionRidge regression is very similar to least squares, except that the Ridge coefficients are estimated by minimizing a different quantity. In particular, the Ridge regression coefficients β are the values that minimize the following quantity:Here, λ is the tuning parameter that decides how much we want to penalize the flexibility of the model. λ controls the relative impact of the two components: RSS and the penalty term. If λ = 0, the Ridge regression will produce a result similar to least squares method. If λ → ∞, all estimated coefficients tend to zero. Ridge regression produces different estimates for different values of λ. The optimal choice of λ is crucial and should be done with cross-validation. The coefficient estimates produced by ridge regression method is also known as the L2 norm.The coefficients generated by Ordinary Least Squares method is independent of scale, which means that if each input variable is multiplied by a constant, the corresponding coefficient will be divided by the same constant, as a result of which the multiplication of the coefficient and the input variables will remain the same. The same is not true for ridge regression and we need to bring the coefficients to the same scale before we perform the process. To standardize the variables, we must subtract their means and divide it by their standard deviations.Lasso RegressionLeast Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) regression also shrinks the coefficients by adding a penalty to the sum of squares of the residuals, but the lasso penalty has a slightly different effect. The lasso penalty is the sum of the absolute values of the coefficient vector, which corresponds to its L1 norm. Hence, the lasso estimate is defined by:Similar to ridge regression, the input variables need to be standardized. The lasso penalty makes the solution nonlinear, and there is no closed-form expression for the coefficients as in ridge regression. Instead, the lasso solution is a quadratic programming problem and there are available efficient algorithms that compute the entire path of coefficients that result for different values of λ with the same computational cost as for ridge regression.The lasso penalty had the effect of gradually reducing some coefficients to zero as the regularization increases. For this reason, the lasso can be used for the continuous selection of a subset of features.Linear Regression with multiple variablesLinear regression with multiple variables is also known as "multivariate linear regression". We now introduce notation for equations where we can have any number of input variables.x(i)j=value of feature j in the ith training examplex(i)=the input (features) of the ith training examplem=the number of training examplesn=the number of featuresThe multivariable form of the hypothesis function accommodating these multiple features is as follows:hθ(x)=θ0+θ1x1+θ2x2+θ3x3+⋯+θnxnIn order to develop intuition about this function, we can think about θ0 as the basic price of a house, θ1 as the price per square meter, θ2 as the price per floor, etc. x1 will be the number of square meters in the house, x2 the number of floors, etc.Using the definition of matrix multiplication, our multivariable hypothesis function can be concisely represented as:This is a vectorization of our hypothesis function for one training example; see the lessons on vectorization to learn more.Remark: Note that for convenience reasons in this course we assume x0 (i) =1 for (i∈1,…,m). This allows us to do matrix operations with θ and x. Hence making the two vectors ‘θ’and x(i) match each other element-wise (that is, have the same number of elements: n+1).Multiple Linear RegressionHow is it different?In simple linear regression we use a single independent variable to predict the value of a dependent variable whereas in multiple linear regression two or more independent variables are used to predict the value of a dependent variable. The difference between the two is the number of independent variables. In both cases there is only a single dependent variable.MulticollinearityMulticollinearity tells us the strength of the relationship between independent variables. Multicollinearity is a state of very high intercorrelations or inter-associations among the independent variables. It is therefore a type of disturbance in the data, and if present in the data the statistical inferences made about the data may not be reliable. VIF (Variance Inflation Factor) is used to identify the Multicollinearity. If VIF value is greater than 4, we exclude that variable from our model.There are certain reasons why multicollinearity occurs:It is caused by an inaccurate use of dummy variables.It is caused by the inclusion of a variable which is computed from other variables in the data set.Multicollinearity can also result from the repetition of the same kind of variable.Generally occurs when the variables are highly correlated to each other.Multicollinearity can result in several problems. These problems are as follows:The partial regression coefficient due to multicollinearity may not be estimated precisely. The standard errors are likely to be high.Multicollinearity results in a change in the signs as well as in the magnitudes of the partial regression coefficients from one sample to another sample.Multicollinearity makes it tedious to assess the relative importance of the independent variables in explaining the variation caused by the dependent variable.Iterative ModelsModels should be tested and upgraded again and again for better performance. Multiple iterations allows the model to learn from its previous result and take that into consideration while performing the task again.Making predictions with Linear RegressionLinear Regression can be used to predict the value of an unknown variable using a known variable by the help of a straight line (also called the regression line). The prediction can only be made if it is found that there is a significant correlation between the known and the unknown variable through both a correlation coefficient and a scatterplot.The general procedure for using regression to make good predictions is the following:Research the subject-area so that the model can be built based on the results produced by similar models. This research helps with the subsequent steps.Collect data for appropriate variables which have some correlation with the model.Specify and assess the regression model.Run repeated tests so that the model has more data to work with.To test if the model is good enough observe whether:The scatter plot forms a linear pattern.The correlation coefficient r, has a value above 0.5 or below -0.5. A positive value indicates a positive relationship and a negative value represents a negative relationship.If the correlation coefficient shows a strong relationship between variables but the scatter plot is not linear, the results can be misleading. Examples on how to use linear regression have been shown earlier.Data preparation for Linear RegressionStep 1: Linear AssumptionThe first step for data preparation is checking for the variables which have some sort of linear correlation between the dependent and the independent variables.Step 2: Remove NoiseIt is the process of reducing the number of attributes in the dataset by eliminating the features which have very little to no requirement for the construction of the model.Step 3: Remove CollinearityCollinearity tells us the strength of the relationship between independent variables. If two or more variables are highly collinear, it would not make sense to keep both the variables while evaluating the model and hence we can keep one of them.Step 4: Gaussian DistributionsThe linear regression model will produce more reliable results if the input and output variables have a Gaussian distribution. The Gaussian theorem states that  states that a sample mean from an infinite population is approximately normal, or Gaussian, with mean the same as the underlying population, and variance equal to the population variance divided by the sample size. The approximation improves as the sample size gets large.Step 5: Rescale InputsLinear regression model will produce more reliable predictions if the input variables are rescaled using standardization or normalization.Linear Regression with statsmodelsWe have already discussed OLS method, now we will move on and see how to use the OLS method in the statsmodels library. For this we will be using the popular advertising dataset. Here, we will only be looking at the TV variable and explore whether spending on TV advertising can predict the number of sales for the product. Let’s start by importing this csv file as a pandas dataframe using read_csv():# Import and display first five rows of advertising dataset advert = pd.read_csv('advertising.csv') advert.head()TVRadioNewspaperSales0230.137.869.222.1144.539.345.110.4217.245.969.312.03151.541.358.516.54180.810.858.417.9Now we will use statsmodels’ OLS function to initialize simple linear regression model. It will take the formula y ~ X, where X is the predictor variable (TV advertising costs) and y is the output variable (Sales). Then, we will fit the model by calling the OLS object’s fit() method.import statsmodels.formula.api as smf # Initialise and fit linear regression model using statsmodels model = smf.ols('Sales ~ TV', data=advert) model = model.fit()Once we have fit the simple regression model, we can predict the values of sales based on the equation we just derived using the .predict method and also visualise our regression model by plotting sales_pred against the TV advertising costs to find the line of best fit.# Predict values sales_pred = model.predict() # Plot regression against actual data plt.figure(figsize=(12, 6)) plt.plot(advert['TV'], advert['Sales'], 'o')       # scatter plot showing actual data plt.plot(advert['TV'], sales_pred, 'r', linewidth=2)   # regression line plt.xlabel('TV Advertising Costs') plt.ylabel('Sales') plt.title('TV vs Sales') plt.show()In the above graph, if you notice you will see that there is a positive linear relationship between TV advertising costs and Sales. You may also summarize by saying that spending more on TV advertising predicts a higher number of sales.Linear Regression with scikit-learnLet us learn to implement linear regression models using sklearn. For this model as well, we will continue to use the advertising dataset but now we will use two predictor variables to create a multiple linear regression model. Yₑ = α + β₁X₁ + β₂X₂ + … + βₚXₚ, where p is the number of predictors.In our example, we will be predicting Sales using the variables TV and Radio i.e. our model can be written as:Sales = α + β₁*TV + β₂*Radiofrom sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression # Build linear regression model using TV and Radio as predictors # Split data into predictors X and output Y predictors = ['TV', 'Radio'] X = advert[predictors] y = advert['Sales'] # Initialise and fit model lm = LinearRegression() model = lm.fit(X, y) print(f'alpha = {model.intercept_}') print(f'betas = {model.coef_}')alpha = 4.630879464097768 betas = [0.05444896 0.10717457]model.predict(X)Now that we have fit a multiple linear regression model to our data, we can predict sales from any combination of TV and Radio advertising costs. For example, you want to know how many sales we would make if we invested $600 in TV advertising and$300 in Radio advertising. You can simply find it out by:new_X = [[600, 300]] print(model.predict(new_X))[69.4526273]We get the output as 69.45 which means if we invest $600 on TV and$300 on Radio advertising, we can expect to sell 69 units approximately.SummaryLet us sum up what we have covered in this article so far —How to understand a regression problemWhat is linear regression and how it worksOrdinary Least Square method and RegularizationImplementing Linear Regression in Python using statsmodel and sklearn libraryWe have discussed about a couple of ways to implement linear regression and build efficient models for certain business problems. If you are inspired by the opportunities provided by machine learning, enrol in our  Data Science and Machine Learning Courses for more lucrative career options in this landscape.
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What is Linear Regression in Machine Learning

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