Regression analysis can be described as . a tool for building statistical models that characterize relationships among a dependent variable and one or more independent variables, all of which are numerical a statistical hypothesis test in which the sampling distribution of the test statistic is a chi-square distribution when the null hypothesis is true a statistical hypothesis test in which the test statistic follows a Student's t-distribution if the null hypothesis is supported a collection of statistical models in which the observed variance in a particular variable is partitioned into components attributable to different sources of variation