[R] AIC and model selection; not a R question

[Charles C. Berry]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007, Lynnette Dagenais wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if someone could help me answer a question that is bound 
> to come up in my Master's defense.

Lynnette,

I expect you will get some opinions here, but you might get a better 
answer from your committee.

Have you already asked the members of your committee?

If not, it would seem best to start there. In the institutions in which I 
have studied and/or taught, the role of the committee member was to 
educate as well as to test the candidate. Surely, committee members will 
understand the details of your research better than we can. There are many 
issues regarding models selection, and knowing how best to address them 
does depend on the details of what you wish to accomplish that they will 
know and we do not.

If you have asked, why are you asking here? Is there some difficulty or 
conflict that they have posed without providing the resolution? Are some 
members skeptical of model selection in general or of the particular 
procedure you use? Are there procedures that you have not used that 
some committee members would have favored?

HTH,

Chuck


I'm using AIC to select models and my 
> question is how do I know that the models I developed a priori contain 
> the 'best' models in the system. How do I not know that some models 
> which I didn't include aren't actually the 'best' model??
>
> Thanks so much
> Lynnette
>
> ~
> Lynnette Dagenais
> M.Sc. candidate
> Department of Renewable Resources
> University of Alberta, Edmonton
> Canada
>
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Charles C. Berry                            (858) 534-2098
                                             Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine
E mailto:cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu	            UC San Diego
http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/  La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901