A Mathematical Programming Approach for Integrated Multiple Linear Regression Subset Selection and Validation
This work addresses the need for fully automated, reliable model building in statistics and data science, though it is incremental as it builds on existing subset selection methods.
The paper tackles the problem of automating subset selection and validation in multiple linear regression by integrating model building and validation through mathematical programming, resulting in solutions that satisfy more regression assumptions than state-of-the-art benchmarks while maintaining similar explanatory power.
Subset selection for multiple linear regression aims to construct a regression model that minimizes errors by selecting a small number of explanatory variables. Once a model is built, various statistical tests and diagnostics are conducted to validate the model and to determine whether the regression assumptions are met. Most traditional approaches require human decisions at this step. For example, the user adding or removing a variable until a satisfactory model is obtained. However, this trial-and-error strategy cannot guarantee that a subset that minimizes the errors while satisfying all regression assumptions will be found. In this paper, we propose a fully automated model building procedure for multiple linear regression subset selection that integrates model building and validation based on mathematical programming. The proposed model minimizes mean squared errors while ensuring that the majority of the important regression assumptions are met. We also propose an efficient constraint to approximate the constraint for the coefficient t-test. When no subset satisfies all of the considered regression assumptions, our model provides an alternative subset that satisfies most of these assumptions. Computational results show that our model yields better solutions (i.e., satisfying more regression assumptions) compared to the state-of-the-art benchmark models while maintaining similar explanatory power.