VIF = Variance Inflation Factor

• In linear regression collinearity can make coefficient unstable
  • There will not be any issue in prediction accuracy but coefficients would be less reliable and p-value would be more
  • Correlation coefficients help us detect correlation between pairs but not the multiple correlation x1 = 2*x3 + 4*x7
  • PCA is one thing, we don’t want to transform variable to keep interpretability intact
  • We want some way to reduce dimensions
• In VIF, each feature is regression against all other features. If R2 is more which means this feature is correlated with other features.  [0]
  • VIF = 1 / (1 – R2)
  • When R2 reaches 1, VIF reaches infinity
• We try to remove features for which VIF > 5

• Example at [1] shows the use of VIF to reduce no of features.
• Once we identify high VIF for features we need to reduce it
  • We can do it by eliminating some features
  • How to identify which feature to remove?
    • Check the correlated features for feature having high VIF
    • In the example at [1] weight and BSA were correlated
    • Practically it is easy to measure weight so we kept it
      • So such decision depends on the practical implication
    • There can be the case that one feature is correlated with many others and we might want to remove it     

 

Reference

[0] : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SBIXgPVex8

[1] : https://newonlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat501/node/347/