Linear regression

Using linear regression, you can model the linear relationship between independent variables, or features, and a dependent variable, or outcome. You can build linear regression models to:

• Fit a predictive model to a training data set of independent variables and some dependent variable. Doing so allows you to use feature variable values to make predictions on outcomes. For example, you can predict the amount of rain that will fall on a particular day of the year.

• Determine the strength of the relationship between an independent variable and some outcome variable. For example, suppose you want to determine the importance of various weather variables on the outcome of how much rain will fall. You can build a linear regression model based on observations of weather patterns and rainfall to find the answer.

Unlike Logistic regression, which you use to determine a binary classification outcome, linear regression is primarily used to predict continuous numerical outcomes in linear relationships.

You can use the following functions to build a linear regression model, view the model, and use the model to make predictions on a set of test data:

• LINEAR_REG
• PREDICT_LINEAR_REG
• GET_MODEL_SUMMARY

For a complete example of how to use linear regression on a table in Vertica, see Building a linear regression model.