Screening (multi)collinearity in a regression model

Question

I hope that this one is not going to be \"ask-and-answer\" question... here goes: (multi)collinearity refers to extremely high correlations between predictors in the regress

Answer 1

The kappa() function can help. Here is a simulated example:

> set.seed(42)
> x1 <- rnorm(100)
> x2 <- rnorm(100)
> x3 <- x1 + 2*x2 + rnorm(100)*0.0001    # so x3 approx a linear comb. of x1+x2
> mm12 <- model.matrix(~ x1 + x2)        # normal model, two indep. regressors
> mm123 <- model.matrix(~ x1 + x2 + x3)  # bad model with near collinearity
> kappa(mm12)                            # a 'low' kappa is good
[1] 1.166029
> kappa(mm123)                           # a 'high' kappa indicates trouble
[1] 121530.7

and we go further by making the third regressor more and more collinear:

> x4 <- x1 + 2*x2 + rnorm(100)*0.000001  # even more collinear
> mm124 <- model.matrix(~ x1 + x2 + x4)
> kappa(mm124)
[1] 13955982
> x5 <- x1 + 2*x2                        # now x5 is linear comb of x1,x2
> mm125 <- model.matrix(~ x1 + x2 + x5)
> kappa(mm125)
[1] 1.067568e+16
> 

This used approximations, see help(kappa) for details.