Model comparison

Prof. Maria Tackett

Mar 03, 2026

Announcements

Topics

  • Root mean square error
  • ANOVA for multiple linear regression and sum of squares
  • Comparing models with \(Adj. R^2\)
  • Occam’s razor and parsimony
  • Cross validation

Computational setup

# load packages
library(tidyverse)
library(tidymodels)
library(patchwork)
library(knitr)
library(kableExtra)

# set default theme and larger font size for ggplot2
ggplot2::theme_set(ggplot2::theme_bw(base_size = 20))

Introduction

Data: Restaurant tips

Which variables help us predict the amount customers tip at a restaurant? To answer this question, we will use data collected in 2011 by a student at St. Olaf who worked at a local restaurant.

# A tibble: 169 × 4
     Tip Party Meal   Age   
   <dbl> <dbl> <chr>  <chr> 
 1  2.99     1 Dinner Yadult
 2  2        1 Dinner Yadult
 3  5        1 Dinner SenCit
 4  4        3 Dinner Middle
 5 10.3      2 Dinner SenCit
 6  4.85     2 Dinner Middle
 7  5        4 Dinner Yadult
 8  4        3 Dinner Middle
 9  5        2 Dinner Middle
10  1.58     1 Dinner SenCit
# ℹ 159 more rows

Variables

Predictors:

  • Party: Number of people in the party
  • Meal: Time of day (Lunch, Dinner, Late Night)
  • Age: Age category of person paying the bill (Yadult, Middle, SenCit)
  • Payment: Payment type (Cash, Credit, Credit/CashTip)

Response: Tip: Amount of tip

Response: Tip

Predictors

Relevel categorical predictors

tips <- tips |>
  mutate(
    Meal = fct_relevel(Meal, "Lunch", "Dinner", "Late Night"),
    Age  = fct_relevel(Age, "Yadult", "Middle", "SenCit")
  )

Predictors, again

Response vs. predictors

Fit and summarize model

tip_fit <- lm(Tip ~ Party + Age, data = tips)

tidy(tip_fit) |>
  kable(digits = 3)
term estimate std.error statistic p.value
(Intercept) -0.170 0.366 -0.465 0.643
Party 1.837 0.124 14.758 0.000
AgeMiddle 1.009 0.408 2.475 0.014
AgeSenCit 1.388 0.485 2.862 0.005


Is this a useful model? How well does this model perform?

RMSE

\[ RMSE = \sqrt{\frac{\sum_{i=1}^n(y_i - \hat{y}_i)^2}{n}} = \sqrt{\frac{\sum_{i=1}^ne_i^2}{n}} \]

  • Ranges between 0 (perfect predictor) and infinity (terrible predictor)

  • Same units as the response variable

  • The value of RMSE is more useful for comparing across models than evaluating a single model

RMSE in R

Use the rmse() function from the yardstick package (part of tidymodels)

tip_aug <- augment(tip_fit)
rmse(tip_aug, truth = Tip, estimate = .fitted)
# A tibble: 1 × 3
  .metric .estimator .estimate
  <chr>   <chr>          <dbl>
1 rmse    standard        2.02

Analysis of variance (ANOVA)

Analysis of Variance (ANOVA): Technique to partition variability in Y by the sources of variability

ANOVA

  • Main Idea: Decompose the total variation in the response into

    • the variation that can be explained by the each of the variables in the model

    • the variation that can’t be explained by the model (left in the residuals)

  • If the variation that can be explained by the variables in the model is greater than the variation in the residuals, this signals that the model might be “valuable” (at least one of the \(\beta\)’s not equal to 0)

Sum of Squares


\[ \begin{aligned} \color{#407E99}{SST} \hspace{5mm}&= &\color{#993399}{SSM} &\hspace{5mm} + &\color{#8BB174}{SSR} \\[10pt] \color{#407E99}{\sum_{i=1}^n(y_i - \bar{y})^2} \hspace{5mm}&= &\color{#993399}{\sum_{i = 1}^{n}(\hat{y}_i - \bar{y})^2} &\hspace{5mm}+ &\color{#8BB174}{\sum_{i = 1}^{n}(y_i - \hat{y}_i)^2} \end{aligned} \]

\(R^2\)

The coefficient of determination \(R^2\) is the proportion of variation in the response, \(Y\), that is explained by the regression model

\[ R^2 = \frac{SSM}{SST} = 1 - \frac{SSR}{SST} = 1 - \frac{686.44}{1913.11} = 0.641 \]

Model comparison

Two potential models

Let’s consider two models:

  • Model 1: Party, Age
  • Model 2: Party, Age, Payment
Which model is a better fit for the data?

Limitation of \(R^2\)


When we add a predictor to a model:

  • The residual sum of squares (SSR) can only decrease (or stay the same)
  • Therefore, \(R^2\) can only increase (or stay the same)

Why can’t we soley rely on \(R^2\)?

Why can’t we rely solely on \(R^2\) for model comparison?

🔗 https://forms.office.com/r/ZWQEhqkcRX

Limitation of \(R^2\)


If we choose models based only on \(R^2\):

  • We will always prefer models with more predictors
  • Even if those predictors add little real value

We need a measure that balances model fit and model complexity

Adjusted \(R^2\)

Adjusted \(R^2\) penalizes for unnecessary predictors

\[Adj. R^2 = 1 - \frac{SSR/(n-p-1)}{SST/(n-1)}\]

where

  • \(n\) is the number of observations used to fit the model

  • \(p\) is the number of terms (not including the intercept) in the model

Comparing models with \(Adj. R^2\)

tip_fit_1 <- lm(Tip ~ Party + Age , 
    data = tips)

glance(tip_fit_1) |> 
  select(r.squared, adj.r.squared)
# A tibble: 1 × 2
  r.squared adj.r.squared
      <dbl>         <dbl>
1     0.641         0.635
tip_fit_2 <- lm(Tip ~ Party + Age + Payment, 
      data = tips)

glance(tip_fit_2) |> 
  select(r.squared, adj.r.squared)
# A tibble: 1 × 2
  r.squared adj.r.squared
      <dbl>         <dbl>
1     0.644         0.633


  1. Which model would we choose based on \(R^2\)?
  2. Which model would we choose based on Adjusted \(R^2\)?

Model comparison and evaluation

  • Adjusted \(R^2\) can be used to compare models

  • \(R^2\) describes how much variability in the response is explained by the predictors

  • RMSE can be used to compare models and describe predictive performance

Parsimony and Occam’s razor

  • The principle of parsimony is attributed to William of Occam (early 14th-century English nominalist philosopher), who insisted that, given a set of equally good explanations for a given phenomenon, the correct explanation is the simplest explanation1

  • Called Occam’s razor because he “shaved” his explanations down to the bare minimum

  • Parsimony in modeling:

    • models should have as few parameters as possible
    • linear models should be preferred to non-linear models
    • experiments relying on few assumptions should be preferred to those relying on many
    • models should be pared down until they are minimal adequate
    • simple explanations should be preferred to complex explanations

In pursuit of Occam’s razor

  • Occam’s razor states that among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected

  • Model selection follows this principle

  • We only want to add another variable to the model if the addition of that variable brings something valuable in terms of predictive power to the model

  • In other words, we prefer the simplest best model, i.e. parsimonious model

Alternate views

Sometimes a simple model will outperform a more complex model . . . Nevertheless, I believe that deliberately limiting the complexity of the model is not fruitful when the problem is evidently complex. Instead, if a simple model is found that outperforms some particular complex model, the appropriate response is to define a different complex model that captures whatever aspect of the problem led to the simple model performing well.


Radford Neal - Bayesian Learning for Neural Networks1

Why parsimony matters

Potential issues with overly complex models:

  • Can overfit the data
  • May not generalize well to new observations
  • Are harder to interpret

Evaluating models with training and testing sets

Training vs. testing sets

  • The training set (i.e., the data used to fit the model) does not have the capacity to be a good arbiter of performance.

  • It is not an independent piece of information; predicting the training set can only reflect what the model already knows.

  • Suppose you give a class a test, then give them the answers, then provide the same test. The student scores on the second test do not accurately reflect what they know about the subject; these scores would probably be higher than their results on the first test.

  • We can reserve some data for a testing set that can be used to evaluate the model performance

Training and testing sets

Create training and testing sets using functions from the resample R package (part of tidymodels)

Step 1: Create an initial split:

set.seed(210)
tips_split <- initial_split(tips, prop = 0.75) #prop = 3/4 by default

Step 2: Save training data

tips_train <- training(tips_split)
dim(tips_train)
[1] 126  13

Step 3: Save testing data

tips_test <- testing(tips_split)
dim(tips_test)
[1] 43 13

Application exercise

📋 sta210-sp26.github.io/ae/ae-09-model-compare.html

Recap

  • ANOVA for multiple linear regression and sum of squares
  • Comparing models with
    • \(R^2\) vs. \(Adj. R^2\)
    • AIC and BIC
  • Occam’s razor and parsimony
  • Training and testing data

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