What does an R-Squared value indicate about a linear regression?

Question

3590 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2015-11-01T02:25:42

It indicates to what extent, the independent variable explains the dependent variable.

Suppose your dependent variable $y$ is a social variable. It is affected by so many forces. $x$ is one of the forces.

Now we shall have it like this.

$y$ is affected by $x$ and variables other than $x.$

In regression we collect data relating to $x$ and $y.$

We want to know how far the variation in $y$ is caused by $x$ alone.

We calculate $R^2$ . If its value is 0.74.

Our conclusion is that 74% variation in $y$ is attributable to $x$ .

It goes without saying the rest 26% change in $y$ is caused by variables other than $x$ .