# Classification with Categorical Variables (the fuzzy side)

The Gaussian and the (log) Poisson regressions share a very interesting property,

$\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n \widehat{Y}_i=\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n Y_i$

i.e. the average predicted value is the empirical mean of our sample.

> mean(predict(lm(dist~speed,data=cars)))
[1] 42.98
> mean(cars$dist) [1] 42.98 One can prove that it is also the prediction for the average individual in our sample > predict(lm(dist~speed,data=cars), + newdata=data.frame(speed=mean(cars$speed)))
42.98

The geometric interpretation is that the regression line passes through the centroid,

> plot(cars)
> abline(lm(dist~speed,data=cars),col="red")
> abline(h=mean(cars$dist),col="blue") > abline(v=mean(cars$speed),col="blue")
> points(mean(cars$speed),mean(cars$dist))

But in all other cases, it is no longer the case. Consider for instance the case of a logistic regression. And to ask for something even more complicated, consider the case where we have only categorical explanatory variables. In that context, it is more difficult to get a prediction for the “average individual”. Unless we consider some fuzzy interpretation of the regression.