Visualization of Regression Models Using visreg

Authors

Patrick Breheny, University of Iowa
Woodrow Burchett, University of Kentucky

Date of this Version

12-2017

Document Type

Article

Citation

The R Journal (December 2017) 9(2); Editor: Roger Bivand

Comments

Copyright 2017, The R Foundation. Open access material. License: CC BY 4.0

Abstract

Regression models allow one to isolate the relationship between the outcome and an explanatory variable while the other variables are held constant. Here, we introduce an R package, visreg, for the convenient visualization of this relationship via short, simple function calls. In addition to estimates of this relationship, the package also provides pointwise confidence bands and partial residuals to allow assessment of variability as well as outliers and other deviations from modeling assumptions. The package provides several options for visualizing models with interactions, including lattice plots, contour plots, and both static and interactive perspective plots. The implementation of the package is designed to be fully object-oriented and interface seamlessly with R’s rich collection of model classes, allowing a consistent interface for visualizing not only linear models, but generalized linear models, proportional hazards models, generalized additive models, robust regression models, and many more.