Using other operators in competition model

bellamy

Hi @dashiell-young-saver, I have a student who has done some research before with R and he was wondering if other operators like : and * are allowed instead of only using "+"? I'm not too familiar but I looked into it and it seems pretty interesting. I think the other operators combine variables while accounting for dependency between them instead of using "+" which assumes they are independent? He said it did improve the R² value for his model so he was wondering if it was allowed.

dashiell-young-saver

Totally allowed! Using * adds an interaction term to the model, which can sometimes be helpful. Outside the scope of what we explicitly teach in the challenge notebooks, but it's a totally valid thing to add to a model!