Fitting models using R-style formulas¶
Since version 0.5.0, statsmodels
allows users to fit statistical
models using R-style formulas. Internally, statsmodels
uses the
patsy package to convert formulas and
data to the matrices that are used in model fitting. The formula
framework is quite powerful; this tutorial only scratches the surface. A
full description of the formula language can be found in the patsy
docs:
Loading modules and functions¶
In [1]: import statsmodels.formula.api as smf
In [2]: import numpy as np
In [3]: import pandas
Notice that we called statsmodels.formula.api
instead of the usual
statsmodels.api
. The formula.api
hosts many of the same
functions found in api
(e.g. OLS, GLM), but it also holds lower case
counterparts for most of these models. In general, lower case models
accept formula
and df
arguments, whereas upper case ones take
endog
and exog
design matrices. formula
accepts a string
which describes the model in terms of a patsy
formula. df
takes
a pandas data frame.
dir(smf)
will print a list of available models.
Formula-compatible models have the following generic call signature:
(formula, data, subset=None, *args, **kwargs)
OLS regression using formulas¶
To begin, we fit the linear model described on the Getting Started page. Download the data, subset columns, and list-wise delete to remove missing observations:
In [4]: df = sm.datasets.get_rdataset("Guerry", "HistData").data
In [5]: df = df[['Lottery', 'Literacy', 'Wealth', 'Region']].dropna()
In [6]: df.head()
Out[6]:
Lottery Literacy Wealth Region
0 41 37 73 E
1 38 51 22 N
2 66 13 61 C
3 80 46 76 E
4 79 69 83 E
Fit the model:
In [7]: mod = smf.ols(formula='Lottery ~ Literacy + Wealth + Region', data=df)
In [8]: res = mod.fit()
In [9]: print(res.summary())
OLS Regression Results
==============================================================================
Dep. Variable: Lottery R-squared: 0.338
Model: OLS Adj. R-squared: 0.287
Method: Least Squares F-statistic: 6.636
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2017 Prob (F-statistic): 1.07e-05
Time: 21:36:08 Log-Likelihood: -375.30
No. Observations: 85 AIC: 764.6
Df Residuals: 78 BIC: 781.7
Df Model: 6
Covariance Type: nonrobust
===============================================================================
coef std err t P>|t| [0.025 0.975]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Intercept 38.6517 9.456 4.087 0.000 19.826 57.478
Region[T.E] -15.4278 9.727 -1.586 0.117 -34.793 3.938
Region[T.N] -10.0170 9.260 -1.082 0.283 -28.453 8.419
Region[T.S] -4.5483 7.279 -0.625 0.534 -19.039 9.943
Region[T.W] -10.0913 7.196 -1.402 0.165 -24.418 4.235
Literacy -0.1858 0.210 -0.886 0.378 -0.603 0.232
Wealth 0.4515 0.103 4.390 0.000 0.247 0.656
==============================================================================
Omnibus: 3.049 Durbin-Watson: 1.785
Prob(Omnibus): 0.218 Jarque-Bera (JB): 2.694
Skew: -0.340 Prob(JB): 0.260
Kurtosis: 2.454 Cond. No. 371.
==============================================================================
Warnings:
[1] Standard Errors assume that the covariance matrix of the errors is correctly specified.
Categorical variables¶
Looking at the summary printed above, notice that patsy
determined
that elements of Region were text strings, so it treated Region as a
categorical variable. patsy
‘s default is also to include an
intercept, so we automatically dropped one of the Region categories.
If Region had been an integer variable that we wanted to treat
explicitly as categorical, we could have done so by using the C()
operator:
In [10]: res = smf.ols(formula='Lottery ~ Literacy + Wealth + C(Region)', data=df).fit()
In [11]: print(res.params)
Intercept 38.651655
C(Region)[T.E] -15.427785
C(Region)[T.N] -10.016961
C(Region)[T.S] -4.548257
C(Region)[T.W] -10.091276
Literacy -0.185819
Wealth 0.451475
dtype: float64
Examples more advanced features patsy
‘s categorical variables
function can be found here: Patsy: Contrast Coding Systems for
categorical variables
Operators¶
We have already seen that “~” separates the left-hand side of the model from the right-hand side, and that “+” adds new columns to the design matrix.
Removing variables¶
The “-” sign can be used to remove columns/variables. For instance, we can remove the intercept from a model by:
In [12]: res = smf.ols(formula='Lottery ~ Literacy + Wealth + C(Region) -1 ', data=df).fit()
In [13]: print(res.params)
C(Region)[C] 38.651655
C(Region)[E] 23.223870
C(Region)[N] 28.634694
C(Region)[S] 34.103399
C(Region)[W] 28.560379
Literacy -0.185819
Wealth 0.451475
dtype: float64
Multiplicative interactions¶
”:” adds a new column to the design matrix with the product of the other two columns. “*” will also include the individual columns that were multiplied together:
In [14]: res1 = smf.ols(formula='Lottery ~ Literacy : Wealth - 1', data=df).fit()
In [15]: res2 = smf.ols(formula='Lottery ~ Literacy * Wealth - 1', data=df).fit()
In [16]: print(res1.params)
Literacy:Wealth 0.018176
dtype: float64
In [17]: print(res2.params)