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Downsides Of Logistic Regression

Vincent Granville points out a few flaws in logistic regression:

I recently read a very popular article entitled 5 Reasons “Logistic Regression” should be the first thing you learn when becoming a Data Scientist. Here I provide my opinion on why this should no be the case.

It is nice to have logistic regression on your resume, as many jobs request it, especially in some fields such as biostatistics. And if you learned the details during your college classes, good for you. However, for a beginner, this is not the first thing you should learn. In my career, being an isolated statistician (working with marketing guys, sales people, or engineers) in many of my roles, I had the flexibility to choose which tools and methodology to use. Many practitioners today are in a similar environment. If you are a beginner, chances are that you would use logistic regression as a black-box tool with little understanding about how it works: a recipe for disaster.

Read on for his reasons.  I’m not totally convinced, but he does lay out his argument clearly.