Logistic Regression

Abstract

The logistic regression originally is intended to explain the relationship between the probability of an event and a set of covariables. The model's coefficients can be interpreted via the odds and odds ratio, which are presented in introduction of the chapter. The observations are possibly got individually, then we speak of binary logistic regression. When they are grouped, the logistic regression is said binomial. In our presentation we mainly focus on the binary case. For statistical inference the main tool is the maximum likelihood methodology: we present the Wald, Rao and likelihoods ratio results and their use to compare nested models. The problems we intend to deal with are essentially the same as in multiple linear regression: testing global effect, individual effect, selection of variables to build a model, measure of the fitness of the model, prediction of new values… . The methods are demonstrated on data sets using R. Finally we briefly consider the binomial case and the situation where we are interested in several events, that is the polytomous (multinomial) logistic regression and the particular case of ordinal logistic regression.