Up to now I have introduced most steps in regression model building and validation. The last step is to check whether there are observations that have significant impact on model coefficient and specification. The article firstly describes plotting Pearson residual against predictors. Such plots are helpful in identifying non-linearity and provide hints on how to transform predictors. Next, I focus on observations of outlier, leverage and influence that may have significant impact on model building. Outlier is such an observation that its response value is unusual conditional on covariate pattern. Leverage is an observation with covariate pattern that is far away from the regressor space. Influence is the product of outlier and leverage. That is, when influential observation is dropped from the model, there will be a significant shift of the coefficient. Summary statistics for outlier, leverage and influence are studentized residuals, hat values and Cook’s distance. They can be easily visualized with graphs and formally tested using the car package.
