Introduction to Logistic Regression with R

In my previous blog I have explained about linear regression. In today’s post I will explain about logistic regression.
        Consider a scenario where we need to predict a medical condition of a patient (HBP) ,HAVE HIGH BP or NO HIGH BP, based on some observed symptoms – Age, weight, Issmoking, Systolic value, Diastolic value, RACE, etc.. In this scenario we have to build a model which takes the above mentioned symptoms as input values and HBP as response variable. Note that the response variable (HBP) is a value among a fixed set of classes, HAVE HIGH BP or NO HIGH BP.

Logistic regression – a classification problem, not a prediction problem:

In my previous blog I told that we use linear regression for scenarios which involves prediction. But there is a check; the regression analysis cannot be applied in scenarios where the response variable is not continuous. In our case the response variable is not a continuous variable but a value among a fixed set of classes. We call such scenarios as Classification problem rather than prediction problem. In such scenarios where the response variables are more of qualitative nature rather than continuous nature, we have to apply more suitable models namely logistic regression for classification.

Data Analysis Steps

After going through the overview of tools & technologies needed to become a Data scientist in my previous blog post, in this post, we shall understand how to tackle a data analysis problem.
Any data analysis project starts with identifying a business problem where historical data exists. A business problem can be anything which can include prediction problems, analyzing customer behavior, identifying new patterns from past events, building recommendation engines etc.

Data Analysis Tools

As mentioned in my previous post , in this post I will be listing out the tools, blogs and forums, online courses that I have gathered over the past one year, which I felt necessary in my journey, which will be helpful to my fellow data science aspirants.

Data Scientist. The Path I Chose

As we all are marching into the New Year, I would like to post about my plans to become a Data Scientist, my 2014 resolution at Professional front. The term Data Science was first introduced to me a year ago same time. Since then I have started researching and gathering necessary information and decided to become Data Scientist. After one year I just wanted to look back myself to understand where I stand now & still what needs to be done.
Power of Data – possible Use Cases: