Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2016 / iii / Paper 206 / 1 / b / Solution

Let $\hat{\beta }=(X^{T}X{)}^{-1}{X}^{T}Y$, $H=X(X^{T}X{)}^{-1}{X}^T$, ${\hat{y}}_i=x_i^T\hat{\beta }$, and $e_i=y_i-{\hat{y}}_i$. The horizontal axis of the residual-versus-fitted plot is ${\hat{y}}_i$, the fitted values, and the vertical axis is $e_i$, the regression residual, in millimetres. Under the normal linear model, $\mathrm{Var}(e_i)={\sigma }^2(1-h_{ii})$, where $h_{ii}$ is the regression leverage.

In the quantile-quantile plot, the vertical values are the ordered standardized regression residualsand the horizontal values are corresponding theoretical quantiles ${\Phi }^{-1}(p_k)$ of the standard normal distribution, with plotting positions such as $p_k=(k-1/2)/n$. The exact plotting-position convention has little practical effect here. Under Gaussian errors these points should approximately follow a straight line; they are not independent because fitting induces residual correlations.

The main visible concern is curvature in the conditional mean. The red smooth in the residual-versus-fitted plot descends from positive residuals at low fitted values, becomes negative in the middle, and rises again at high fitted values. This suggests the strictly linear time effects may be inadequate. There is no clear monotone widening of the residual scatter, so strong heteroscedasticity is not apparent. The quantile-quantile plot has modest tail deviations and a few labelled observations, but does not show a dramatic departure from normality. These plots cannot establish independence across days or laboratories; check residuals against day, laboratory, and sampling order as well. A large coefficient of determination does not remove the visible mean-model concern.