The connections between measures of leverage, statistical curvature, a
nd the local influence of a mean-shift perturbation are explored in no
nlinear regression models. The circumstances under which the Jacobian
leverage reduces to a commonly-used linear approximation are found to
be connected to the effective residual curvature of the nonlinear mode
l. The local influence of a mean-shift perturbation in the model funct
ion is seen to be closely related to the Jacobian leverage.