Automatic or Manual?
BELMOUIDI Mohamed
28/12/2024
Executive Summary
This study examines a car dataset with various design aspects of 32 automobiles to explore the relationship
between these factors and miles per gallon (MPG). We focus on two questions: whether automatic or manual
transmission performs better for MPG and how to quantify the MPG difference.
Steps taken include:
• Data preprocessing
• Exploratory analysis
• Model selection
• Model evaluation
• Conclusion
Data Preprocessing
We convert the ‘am’ variable (denoting automatic or manual transmission) into a factor variable, along with
other variables, to make them discrete instead of continuous.
data("mtcars")
data <- mtcars
data$am <- [Link](data$am)
levels(data$am) <- c("A", "M")
data$cyl <- [Link](data$cyl)
data$gear <- [Link](data$gear)
data$vs <- [Link](data$vs)
levels(data$vs) <- c("V", "S")
Exploratory Analysis
First let’s take a look at the dataset itself to know about the fields it contains.
str(data)
## ’[Link]’: 32 obs. of 11 variables:
## $ mpg : num 21 21 22.8 21.4 18.7 18.1 14.3 24.4 22.8 19.2 ...
## $ cyl : Factor w/ 3 levels "4","6","8": 2 2 1 2 3 2 3 1 1 2 ...
## $ disp: num 160 160 108 258 360 ...
1
## $ hp : num 110 110 93 110 175 105 245 62 95 123 ...
## $ drat: num 3.9 3.9 3.85 3.08 3.15 2.76 3.21 3.69 3.92 3.92 ...
## $ wt : num 2.62 2.88 2.32 3.21 3.44 ...
## $ qsec: num 16.5 17 18.6 19.4 17 ...
## $ vs : Factor w/ 2 levels "V","S": 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 ...
## $ am : Factor w/ 2 levels "A","M": 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
## $ gear: Factor w/ 3 levels "3","4","5": 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 ...
## $ carb: num 4 4 1 1 2 1 4 2 2 4 ...
head(data, n = 5)
## mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
## Mazda RX4 21.0 6 160 110 3.90 2.620 16.46 V M 4 4
## Mazda RX4 Wag 21.0 6 160 110 3.90 2.875 17.02 V M 4 4
## Datsun 710 22.8 4 108 93 3.85 2.320 18.61 S M 4 1
## Hornet 4 Drive 21.4 6 258 110 3.08 3.215 19.44 S A 3 1
## Hornet Sportabout 18.7 8 360 175 3.15 3.440 17.02 V A 3 2
To see the relationship between the mpg and am more clearly lets create a boxplot.
library(ggplot2)
g <- ggplot(data, aes(am, mpg))
g <- g + geom_boxplot(aes(fill = am))
print(g)
35
30
25
am
mpg
A
M
20
15
10
A M
am
2
The plot clearly indicates that cars with manual transmission have higher MPG compared to those with
automatic transmission. However, other factors may be influencing this relationship. Before building a
model, it’s important to examine other variables that have a higher correlation with MPG than the ‘am’
variable. Let’s review all variables with stronger correlations to MPG.
correlation <- cor(mtcars$mpg, mtcars)
correlation <- correlation[,order(-abs(correlation[1, ]))]
correlation
## mpg wt cyl disp hp drat vs
## 1.0000000 -0.8676594 -0.8521620 -0.8475514 -0.7761684 0.6811719 0.6640389
## am carb gear qsec
## 0.5998324 -0.5509251 0.4802848 0.4186840
variables <- names(correlation)[1: which(names(correlation) == "am")]
variables
## [1] "mpg" "wt" "cyl" "disp" "hp" "drat" "vs" "am"
Model Selection
Now that we know mpg variable has stronger correlations with other variables too apart from just am, we
can’t base our model solely on this one variable as it will not be the most accurate one. Let’s start this
process by fitting mpg with just am.
first <- lm(mpg ~ am, data)
summary(first)
##
## Call:
## lm(formula = mpg ~ am, data = data)
##
## Residuals:
## Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
## -9.3923 -3.0923 -0.2974 3.2439 9.5077
##
## Coefficients:
## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) 17.147 1.125 15.247 1.13e-15 ***
## amM 7.245 1.764 4.106 0.000285 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 ’***’ 0.001 ’**’ 0.01 ’*’ 0.05 ’.’ 0.1 ’ ’ 1
##
## Residual standard error: 4.902 on 30 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared: 0.3598, Adjusted R-squared: 0.3385
## F-statistic: 16.86 on 1 and 30 DF, p-value: 0.000285
In this case p-value is quite low but the R-squared value is the real problem. Hence, let’s now go to the
other extreme end and fit all variables with mpg.
3
last <- lm(mpg ~ ., data)
summary(last)
##
## Call:
## lm(formula = mpg ~ ., data = data)
##
## Residuals:
## Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
## -3.2015 -1.2319 0.1033 1.1953 4.3085
##
## Coefficients:
## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) 15.09262 17.13627 0.881 0.3895
## cyl6 -1.19940 2.38736 -0.502 0.6212
## cyl8 3.05492 4.82987 0.633 0.5346
## disp 0.01257 0.01774 0.708 0.4873
## hp -0.05712 0.03175 -1.799 0.0879 .
## drat 0.73577 1.98461 0.371 0.7149
## wt -3.54512 1.90895 -1.857 0.0789 .
## qsec 0.76801 0.75222 1.021 0.3201
## vsS 2.48849 2.54015 0.980 0.3396
## amM 3.34736 2.28948 1.462 0.1601
## gear4 -0.99922 2.94658 -0.339 0.7382
## gear5 1.06455 3.02730 0.352 0.7290
## carb 0.78703 1.03599 0.760 0.4568
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 ’***’ 0.001 ’**’ 0.01 ’*’ 0.05 ’.’ 0.1 ’ ’ 1
##
## Residual standard error: 2.616 on 19 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared: 0.8845, Adjusted R-squared: 0.8116
## F-statistic: 12.13 on 12 and 19 DF, p-value: 1.764e-06
Here R-squared values have definitely improved but the p-value becomes the problem now which is caused
most probably due to overfitting. So, lets use ‘step’ method to iterate over the variables and obtain the best
model.
best <- step(last, direction = "both", trace = FALSE)
summary(best)
##
## Call:
## lm(formula = mpg ~ wt + qsec + am, data = data)
##
## Residuals:
## Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
## -3.4811 -1.5555 -0.7257 1.4110 4.6610
##
## Coefficients:
## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) 9.6178 6.9596 1.382 0.177915
## wt -3.9165 0.7112 -5.507 6.95e-06 ***
4
## qsec 1.2259 0.2887 4.247 0.000216 ***
## amM 2.9358 1.4109 2.081 0.046716 *
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 ’***’ 0.001 ’**’ 0.01 ’*’ 0.05 ’.’ 0.1 ’ ’ 1
##
## Residual standard error: 2.459 on 28 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared: 0.8497, Adjusted R-squared: 0.8336
## F-statistic: 52.75 on 3 and 28 DF, p-value: 1.21e-11
The R-squared value is strong, and the p-values are significant, making this model a clear best fit for our
analysis.
Model Examination
The ‘best’ model shows that MPG depends on weight (wt) and quarter mile time (qsec), in addition to
transmission type (am). To further evaluate the fit, let’s plot and analyze the residuals to gain a deeper
understanding of the model’s performance.
layout(matrix(c(1,2,3,4),2,2))
plot(best) Standardized residuals
Residuals vs Fitted Scale−Location
Chrysler Imperial Chrysler Imperial Fiat 128
Fiat 128 Toyota Corolla
Residuals
Toyota Corolla
4
1.0
0
0.0
−4
10 15 20 25 30 10 15 20 25 30
Fitted values Fitted values
Standardized residuals
Standardized residuals
Q−Q Residuals Residuals vs Leverage
Chrysler Imperial
Fiat 128 Chrysler Imperial
Fiat 128 0.5
Toyota Corolla
1
1
−1
−1
Cook's distance Merc 230
−2 −1 0 1 2 0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30
Theoretical Quantiles Leverage
Conclusion
The first question—whether automatic or manual transmission is better for MPG—can be answered by all
the models, which show that, holding other factors constant, manual transmission leads to higher MPG.
5
The second question is more challenging. Based on the ‘best’ fit model, we conclude that cars with manual
transmission achieve 2.93 more MPG than those with automatic transmission, with p < 0.05 and R-squared
= 0.85.
However, the residuals vs. fitted plot suggests that something is missing from the model, possibly due to
the small sample size of 32 observations. While the conclusion that manual transmission offers better MPG
holds, the model’s ability to generalize to future observations may be uncertain.
