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Logistic regression is a statistical model that uses the logistic function to model the probability of binary outcomes. It models the log-odds of an event as a linear combination of predictor variables. The logistic function converts the log-odds into a probability value between 0 and 1. Logistic regression is commonly used to model binary dependent variables like whether a patient is healthy or whether a team will win. It generalizes binary logistic regression to handle categorical dependent variables with more than two classes.

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Logistic regression is a statistical model that uses the logistic function to model the probability of binary outcomes. It models the log-odds of an event as a linear combination of predictor variables. The logistic function converts the log-odds into a probability value between 0 and 1. Logistic regression is commonly used to model binary dependent variables like whether a patient is healthy or whether a team will win. It generalizes binary logistic regression to handle categorical dependent variables with more than two classes.

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abhay pandey
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In statistics, the logistic model (or logit model) is a statistical model that

models the probability of an event taking place by having the log-odds for the
event be a linear combination of one or more independent variables. In regression
analysis, logistic regression[1] (or logit regression) is estimating the parameters
of a logistic model (the coefficients in the linear combination). Formally, in
binary logistic regression there is a single binary dependent variable, coded by an
indicator variable, where the two values are labeled "0" and "1", while the
independent variables can each be a binary variable (two classes, coded by an
indicator variable) or a continuous variable (any real value). The corresponding
probability of the value labeled "1" can vary between 0 (certainly the value "0")
and 1 (certainly the value "1"), hence the labeling;[2] the function that converts
log-odds to probability is the logistic function, hence the name. The unit of
measurement for the log-odds scale is called a logit, from logistic unit, hence the
alternative names. See § Background and § Definition for formal mathematics, and §
Example for a worked example.

Binary variables are widely used in statistics to model the probability of a


certain class or event taking place, such as the probability of a team winning, of
a patient being healthy, etc. (see § Applications), and the logistic model has been
the most commonly used model for binary regression since about 1970.[3] Binary
variables can be generalized to categorical variables when there are more than two
possible values (e.g. whether an image is of a cat, dog, lion, etc.), and the
binary logistic regression generalized to multinomial logistic regression. If the
multiple categories are ordered, one can use the ordinal logistic regression (for
example the proportional odds ordinal logistic model[4]). See § Extensions for
further extensions. The logistic regression model itself simply models probability
of output in terms of input and does not perform statistical classification (it is
not a classifier), though it can be used to make a classifier, for instance by
choosing a cutoff value and classifying inputs with probability greater than the
cutoff as one class, below the cutoff as the other; this is a common way to make a
binary classifier.

Analogous linear models for binary variables with a different sigmoid function
instead of the logistic function (to convert the linear combination to a
probability) can also be used, most notably the probit model; see § Alternatives.
The defining characteristic of the logistic model is that increasing one of the
independent variables multiplicatively scales the odds of the given outcome at a
constant rate, with each independent variable having its own parameter; for a
binary dependent variable this generalizes the odds ratio. More abstractly, the
logistic function is the natural parameter for the Bernoulli distribution, and in
this sense is the "simplest" way to convert a real number to a probability. In
particular, it maximizes entropy (minimizes added information), and in this sense
makes the fewest assumptions of the data being modeled; see § Maximum entropy.

The parameters of a logistic regression are most commonly estimated by maximum-


likelihood estimation (MLE). This does not have a closed-form expression, unlike
linear least squares; see § Model fitting. Logistic regression by MLE plays a
similarly basic role for binary or categorical responses as linear regression by
ordinary least squares (OLS) plays for scalar responses: it is a simple, well-
analyzed baseline model; see § Comparison with linear regression for discussion.
The logistic regression as a general statistical model was originally developed and
popularized primarily by Joseph Berkson,[5] beginning in Berkson (1944), where he
coined "logit"; see § History.

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