Which points on a scatter plot do you use to create a linear equation?

1 Answer
Jan 15, 2015

Preferably, all of them.

If you have fantastic data, you should be able to draw a straight line through all of the points.

However, this is not true in most cases.

When you have a scatterplot where not all of the points line up, you have to try your best to draw a line that goes through the middle of the group of points, like this:

http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/27651/how-would-you-explain-generalized-linear-models-to-people-with-no-statistical-ba

You can find the exact line that "best fits" your points by using a graphing calculator (it should be called "linear fit").