[R] Linear Logistic Regression - Understanding the output (and possibly the test to use!)

[stats at wittongilbert.free-online.co.uk]

David Winsemius wrote:
>>
>> 1. is glm the right thing to use before I waste my time
>
> Yes, but if your outcome variable is binomial then the family argument 
> should be .... "binomial". (And if you thought it should be poisson, 
> then why below did you use gaussian???
Used gaussian below because it was the example from the docs.  Thats not 
my data, its example data which was not binomial.

>>
>> and 2. how do I interpret the result!
>
> Result? What result? I do see any description of your data, nor any code.
I didn't provide MY DATA because I thought that would complicate things 
even further.  So I was hoping for some advice on how to interpret the 
result of the example data so that I could then apply that to my data.   
I haven't even tried to run my data as I couldn't see what the output of 
the examples was trying to tell me.

However, as you've snipped it because it was not relevant thats useful 
to know.  I often find this problem with the examples in the R doc's 
they suddenly take a dataset that I have no knowledege of and play with 
it and produce an 'answer'.  The examples are presumably provided to 
enable me to work through how the code works etc.  So what I was hoping 
for was someone to point to somewhere on-line that documents how to use 
the function for logistic regression and to explain what all that table 
of data it spits out actually meant.  Someone has VERY KINDLY posted me 
something off list which I believe helps.
>
> I think you need to consult a statistician or someone who has taken 
> the time to read that "statistical mumbo jumbo" you don't want to 
> learn. This mailing list is not set up to be a tutorial site.
I have access to stats advice, but I don't (a) want to turn up to them 
with a pile of paper from R and them say glm() may be the wrong 
analaysis (b) they don't do R so they can't tell me if I've used R 
wrongly and (c) I completely expect they'd say which of the values in 
the table matter since no paper I've ever seen published showed a 
logistic regression with a table of numbers.
>
> I have a couple of Kleinbaum's (et al) other texts and find them to be 
> well written and reasoned, so I suspect the citation above would be as 
> accessible as any.
>
Thank you, that is useful.  There is a real problem when buying R text 
books.  None of the bookshops round here stock any which means you can't 
tell if they are much good.  I've looked at some and they seem to be 
re-writes of the help files.