Exercise 9.4 considers a model that predicts the number of days absent using three predictors: ethnic background (eth), gender (sex), and learner status (lrn). The table below shows the adjusted R-squared for the model as well as adjusted R-squared values for all models we evaluate in the first step of the backwards elimination process.

Which, if any, variable should be removed from the model first?

Data from Exercise 9.4

Researchers interested in the relationship between absenteeism from school and certain demographic characteristics of children collected data from 146 randomly sampled students in rural New South Wales, Australia, in a particular school year. Below are three observations from this data set.

The summary table below shows the results of a linear regression model for predicting the average number of days absent based on ethnic background (eth: 0 - aboriginal, 1 - not aboriginal), sex (sex: 0 - female, 1 - male), and learner status (lrn: 0 - average learner, 1 - slow learner).

Model Full model No ethnicity No sex 4 No learner status 1 234 3 Adjusted R 0.0701 -0.0033 0.0676 0.0723