Q:

Backward elimination technique in MATLAB

I am a student at statistics department and I have a thesis about the factors of daily life behaviors related to obesity.
I made a test to 200 people and asked 30 questions like, if they smoke or not & fast-food consumption etc...
My question is ; How can i find the significant variables in which are mostly related to obesity situation using backward elimination or forward selection technique in MATLAB.
I am new at MATLAB and don't have any idea about where to start. Could somebody please help me.

A:

If you have access to Statistics Toolbox, take a look at the functions stepwisefit and sequentialfs. Both carry out forms of forward and backward feature selection. stepwisefit does stepwise linear regression, whereas sequentialfs is for general purpose sequential feature selection applicable to many model types.

