ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Pseudo-R-squared

Imagine you are playing a game with your friends and you want to figure out who is the best player. One way to do that is by counting how many times each player wins. But sometimes it is difficult to tell who is the best just by counting wins.

To solve this problem, we can use something called pseudo-r-squared. It is like a special tool that helps us understand how good each player is by looking at different things like how many games they played or how well they did in each game.

You can think of the pseudo-r-squared as a score that tells us how much we can explain about a player's performance based on the things we are looking at. If the score is high, it means we can explain a lot about their performance. If the score is low, it means we cannot really explain much.

Now, let's break it down step by step.

1. First, we need to understand what regression is. Regression is like a magic math formula that helps us find a relationship between two things. In our game example, we can use regression to find a relationship between a player's performance and different factors like the number of games played or the average score.

2. Once we have the regression formula, we can use it to predict how well a player should do based on those factors. For example, if we know that the more games a player plays, the higher their score tends to be, we can predict that a player who plays more games will have a higher score.

3. The pseudo-r-squared comes into play when we compare the predicted scores with the actual scores of the players. If the predicted scores are very close to the actual scores, it means our regression formula is really good at explaining the player's performance. This would result in a high pseudo-r-squared score. On the other hand, if the predicted scores are far off from the actual scores, it means our regression formula is not doing a good job of explaining the performance. This would result in a low pseudo-r-squared score.

4. The pseudo-r-squared score is shown as a number between 0 and 1. If the score is close to 0, it means our regression formula is not good at explaining the performance. If the score is close to 1, it means our regression formula is very good at explaining the performance.

So, by using the pseudo-r-squared score, we can get a better understanding of how well the different factors like number of games played or average score can explain a player's performance. This helps us determine who is the best player in a fairer and more accurate way.