Meaning of 'Regression'
less than a minute
Regression = Going Back
Regression has a very specific historical origin that is different from its current statistical meaning.
Sir Francis Galton (19th century), cousin of Charles Darwin, coined 🪙 this term.
Observation:
Galton observed that -
the children of unusually tall ⬆️ parents ,
tended to be shorter ⬇️ than their parents ,
and children of unusually short ⬇️ parents ,
tended to be taller ⬆️ than their parents .
Galton named this biological tendency - ‘regression towards mediocrity/mean’.
Galton used method of least squares to model this relationship, by fitting a line to the data .
Regression = Fitting a Line
Over time, the name ‘regression’ got permanently attached to the method of fitting line to the data .
Today in statistics and machine learning, ‘regression’ universally refers to the method of finding the
‘line of best fit’ for a set of data points, NOT the concept of ‘regressing towards the mean’.
End of Section