Model Comparison
Models can be compared to each other. This can either be done when you have done an exploratory data analysis or a confirmatory data analysis. In an exploratory analysis, you formulate all models you can think of, and see which describes your data best. In a confirmatory analysis you test which of your models you have described before the data was collected fits the data best, or test if your only model fits the data. In linear regression analysis you can compare the amount of variance explained by the independent variables, R2, across the different models. In general, you can compare models that are nested by using a Likelihood-ratio test. Nested models are models that can be obtained by restricting a parameter in a more complex model to be zero.
Read more about this topic: Statistical Model
Famous quotes containing the words model and/or comparison:
“Research shows clearly that parents who have modeled nurturant, reassuring responses to infants’ fears and distress by soothing words and stroking gentleness have toddlers who already can stroke a crying child’s hair. Toddlers whose special adults model kindliness will even pick up a cookie dropped from a peer’s high chair and return it to the crying peer rather than eat it themselves!”
—Alice Sterling Honig (20th century)
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)