Calculate Statistics - Influence

Influence is a non-dimensional measurement in the range -1 through +1. The meter reading with the greatest influence on the overall balance has the largest magnitude relative to the other measurements.

When you reconcile a model, you want to know which measurement has the greatest influence on the overall balance for the model. As noted earlier, reconciliation is essentially a regression problem, and regression techniques are often used to fit straight lines through multiple points of data, as shown in the following figure.

The quality of fit is defined as the sum of distances or squares of distances from the best-fit line. If the quality of fit is good, then sum approaches a very small number, and the data tends to be linear. In the figure below most of the points are in line, except for one outlier point.

If the outlier is removed, the quality of fit improves because the outlier point has the greatest influence on the fit for the line. The name of the default Element Attribute to which the reconciled influence result is written is [element]. ReconciledInfluence, where [element] is the name of the reconciled measurement element (inventory or flow).