Given a data set { y i , x i 1 , … , x i p } i = 1 n {\displaystyle \{y_{i},\,x_{i1},\ldots ,x_{ip}\}_{i=1}^{n}} of n statistical units, a linear regression model assumes that the relationship between the dependent variable y and the p-vector of regressors x is linear. This relationship is modeled through a disturbance term or error variable ε — an unobserved random variable that adds "noise" to the linear relationship between the dependent variable and regressors. Thus the model takes the form