Lines of best fit and residuals

When a scatter plot shows a roughly linear pattern, a line of best fit summarizes it and lets you make predictions. Technology usually finds the least-squares regression line, and its slope and intercept should be interpreted in context: in a line predicting test score from hours studied, a slope of 5 means each extra hour is associated with about 5 more points. A residual measures how far a real data point is from the line: residual = actual value - predicted value. If the line predicts 72 points for 3 hours of study and the student actually scored 75, the residual is +3, meaning the point lies above the line. A residual plot shows all the residuals; if they scatter randomly around zero, a linear model fits well, but a clear curved pattern suggests a different model would fit better. Predictions far outside the range of the data (extrapolation) are much less reliable.

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