FORECASTING AIRLINE DELAYS

On any given day, more than 87,000 flights take place in the United States alone.
About one-third of these flights are commercial flights, operated by companies
like United, American Airlines, and JetBlue. While about 80% of commercial
flights take-off and land as scheduled, the other 20% suffer from delays due to
various reasons. A certain number of delays are unavoidable, due to unexpected
events, but some delays could hopefully be avoided if the factors causing delays
were better understood and addressed.

In this problem, we'll use a dataset of 9,381 flights that occurred in June through
August of 2014 between the three busiest US airports -- Atlanta (ATL), Los
Angeles (LAX), and Chicago (ORD) -- to predict flight delays. The dataset
AirlineDelay.csv includes the following 23 variables:

1. Flight = the origin-destination pair (LAX-ORD, ATL-LAX, etc.)

2. Carrier = the carrier operating the flight (American Airlines, Delta Air
Lines, etc.)
3. Month = the month of the flight (June, July, or August)
4. DayOfWeek = the day of the week of the flight (Monday, Tuesday, etc.)
5. NumPrevFlights = the number of previous flights taken by this aircraft in
the same day
6. PrevFlightGap = the amount of time between when this flight's aircraft is
scheduled to arrive at the airport and when it's scheduled to depart for
this flight
7. HistoricallyLate = the proportion of time this flight has been late
historically
8. InsufficientHistory = whether or not we have enough data to determine
the historical record of the flight (equal to 1 if we don't have at least 3
records, equal to 0 if we do)
9. OriginInVolume = the amount of incoming traffic volume at the origin
airport, normalized by the typical volume during the flight's time and day
of the week
10.OriginOutVolume = the amount of outgoing traffic volume at the origin
airport, normalized by the typical volume during the flight's time and day
of the week
11.DestInVolume = the amount of incoming traffic volume at the destination
airport, normalized by the typical volume during the flight's time and day
of the week
12.DestOutVolume = the amount of outgoing traffic volume at the destination
airport, normalized by the typical volume during the flight's time and day
of the week
13.OriginPrecip = the amount of rain at the origin over the course of the day,
in tenths of millimeters
14.OriginAvgWind = average daily wind speed at the origin, in miles per hour

15.OriginWindGust = fastest wind speed during the day at the origin, in miles
per hour
16.OriginFog = whether or not there was fog at some point during the day at
the origin (1 if there was, 0 if there wasn't)
17.OriginThunder = whether or not there was thunder at some point during
the day at the origin (1 if there was, 0 if there wasn't)
18.DestPrecip = the amount of rain at the destination over the course of the
day, in tenths of millimeters
19.DestAvgWind = average daily wind speed at the destination, in miles per
hour
20.DestWindGust = fastest wind speed during the day at the destination, in
miles per hour
21.DestFog = whether or not there was fog at some point during the day at
the destination (1 if there was, 0 if there wasn't)
22.DestThunder = whether or not there was thunder at some point during the
day at the destination (1 if there was, 0 if there wasn't)
23.TotalDelay = the amount of time the aircraft was delayed, in minutes (this
is our dependent variable)

PROBLEM 1 - LOADING THE DATA

Load the dataset AirlineDelay.csv into R and call it "Airlines". Randomly split it
into a training set (70% of the data) and testing set (30% of the data) by running
the following lines in your R console:

set.seed(15071)
spl = sample(nrow(Airlines), 0.7*nrow(Airlines))
AirlinesTrain = Airlines[spl,]
AirlinesTest = Airlines[-spl,]

How many observations are in the training set AirlinesTrain? (2 marks)

Answer: 6566
How many observations are in the testing set AirlinesTest? (2 marks)
Answer: 2815
PROBLEM 2 - A LINEAR REGRESSION MODEL
Build a linear regression model to predict "TotalDelay" using all of the other
variables as independent variables. Use the training set to build the model.
What is the model's R-squared? (Please report the "Multiple R-squared" value in
the output.) (2 marks)
Answer: 0.09475
PROBLEM 3 - CHECKING FOR SIGNIFICANCE
In your linear regression model, which of the independent variables are
significant at the p=0.05 level (at least one star)? For factor variables, consider
the variable significant if at least one level is significant. Write all that apply. (2
marks)

PROBLEM 4 - CORRELATIONS
What is the correlation between NumPrevFlights and PrevFlightGap in the
training set? (2 marks)
Answer: -0.652053189
What is the correlation between OriginAvgWind and OriginWindGust in the
training set? (2 marks)
Answer: 0.509953488
Hint: Identify/find out a function that will calculate correlation between variables

PROBLEM 5 - IMPORTANCE OF CORRELATIONS

Why is it important to check for correlations between independent variables?
Select one of the following: (2 marks)
1. Having highly correlated independent variables in a regression model can
affect the interpretation of the coefficients.

2. Having highly correlated independent variables in a regression model can

affect the quality of the resulting predictions.
PROBLEM 6 - COEFFICIENTS
In the model with all of the available independent variables, what is the
coefficient for HistoricallyLate? (2 marks)
Answer: 47.913638
PROBLEM 7 - UNDERSTANDING THE COEFFICIENTS
The coefficient for NumPrevFlights is 1.56. What is the interpretation of this
coefficient? Choose one of the following: (2 marks)

For an increase of 1 in the predicted total delay, the number of previous

flights increases by approximately 1.56.
For an increase of 1 in the number of previous flights, the prediction of the
total delay increases by approximately 1.56.
If the number of previous flights increases by 1, then the total delay will
definitely increase by approximately 1.56; the number of previous flights
should be minimized if airlines want to decrease the amount of delay.

PROBLEM 8 - UNDERSTANDING THE MODEL

Let us try to understand our model.
In the linear regression model, given two flights that are otherwise identical,
what is the absolute difference in predicted total delay given that one flight is on
Thursday and the other is on Sunday? (2 marks)
Answer: 6.989857
In the linear regression model, given two flights that are otherwise identical,
what is the absolute difference in predicted total delay given that one flight is on
Saturday and the other is on Sunday? (2 marks)
Answer: 0.911413
PROBLEM 9 - PREDICTIONS ON THE TEST SET
Make predictions on the test set using your linear regression model. What is the
Sum of Squared Errors (SSE) on the test set? Hint: Use predict function for
prediction. You can then take your data in excel by write.csv function and
compute SSE. You can very well do this R as well. However, the choice is left to
you. (2 marks)
Answer: 4744764

PROBLEM 11 - A CLASSIFICATION PROBLEM

Let's turn this problem into a multi-class classification problem by creating a new
dependent variable. Our new dependent variable will take three different values:
"No Delay", "Minor Delay", and "Major Delay". Create this variable, called

"DelayClass", in your dataset Airlines by running the following line in your R

console:
IMPORTANT: BEFORE YOU DO THIS STEP SAVE YOUR ORIGINAL DATA
FRAME. YOU MAY USE FOLLOWING CODE:
AirlinesOriginal=Airlines
Now you may proceedAirlines$DelayClass = factor(ifelse(Airlines$TotalDelay == 0, "No
Delay", ifelse(Airlines$TotalDelay >= 30, "Major Delay", "Minor Delay")))
How many flights in the dataset Airlines had no delay? (2 marks)
Answer: 4688
How many flights in the dataset Airlines had a minor delay? (2 marks)
Answer: 3096
How many flights in the dataset Airlines had a major delay? (2 marks)
Answer: 1597
Now, remove the original dependent variable "TotalDelay" from your dataset with
the command: Airlines$TotalDelay = NULL
PROBLEM 12 - A CART MODEL
Build a CART model to predict "DelayClass" using all of the other variables as
independent variables and the training set to build the model. Remember that to
predict a multi-class dependent variable, you can use the rpart function in the
same way as for a binary classification problem. Just use the default parameter
settings.
How many split are in the resulting tree? (2 marks)
Answer: 2
The CART model you just built splits first on which variable? (2 marks)
Answer: Historically Late
PROBLEM 13- LOGISTIC REGRESSION
Use following command in your R console to create dichotomous dependant
variable:
AirlinesOriginal$DelayClass = factor(ifelse(AirlinesOriginal$TotalDelay
== 0, "No Delay", Delay"))
What is baseline accuracy? (2 marks)
Answer: 50%
What is the model accuracy? (2 marks)
Answer: 65%
PROBLEM 14- RANDFOREST

Run RandomForest model and identify most significant variable using varImpPlot.
(5 Marks)
Answer: Historically Late