[R-sig-ME] Wald's test

Ben Bolker bbolker at gmail.com
Wed Dec 5 02:36:09 CET 2012


  It does appear however that (as Justin said in the first place) that
car::Anova.lme does only chi-squared and not F tests (car 2.0-15).  I
haven't looked to see how hard it would be to extract the information
from the lme object to get the relevant denominator df (and I don't know
if there are theoretical complications ...)
   Even the two-model anova.lme doesn't do F tests, only likelihood
ratio tests.  Again, don't know whether this is an oversight or whether
there's some reason *not* to provide the option.  (In contrast
anova.glm() *does* provide an F test, for testing nested models with
estimated scale parameters.)


On 12-12-04 08:19 PM, Justin Chase wrote:
> Thanks Dr. Fox.
> 
> I only just figured out today that there were specific help files like
> ?anova.lme. I was trying to figure out the function using only ?anova,
> which says very little.
> That said, I did come across the package "pbkrtest" today and found that
> it provides a nice approximate type II F test (the Kenward-Roger
> approximation) for mixed effects models from lme4. I may wait for the
> Halekoh and Højsgaard paper to come out in the Journal of Statistical
> Software before I switch to this approach, but I would be interested to
> see what others in the R community think about the package and the K-R f
> test.
> 
> Thanks again!
> 
> Justin
> 
> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 8:32 PM, John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca
> <mailto:jfox at mcmaster.ca>> wrote:
> 
>     Dear Justin,
> 
>     The documentation in ?anova.lme seems very clear to me -- what is
>     described for type="marginal" is what is often called type III
>     tests, though for these to be sensible in models with interactions,
>     careful attention has to be paid to contrast coding. The Anova()
>     function in the car package has methods for type II tests for models
>     fit by lme() in the nlme package and lmer() in the lme4 package.
> 
>     I hope this helps,
>      John
> 
>     ------------------------------------------------
>     John Fox
>     Sen. William McMaster Prof. of Social Statistics
>     Department of Sociology
>     McMaster University
>     Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
>     http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/
> 
>     On Tue, 4 Dec 2012 11:15:56 -0400
>      Justin Chase <justinwchase1 at gmail.com
>     <mailto:justinwchase1 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     > Thanks Dr. Bolker!  I have one issue though: I was able to
>     generate F tests
>     > for my lme models using your suggestion anova(fm1,type="marginal")   ,
>     > however, it is my understanding that "marginal" typically refers
>     to Type 3
>     > sums-of-squares, which is discouraged. I'm looking to generate
>     Type 2 tests
>     > (i.e., "conditional"). The help file for anova() does not explain
>     what the
>     > word "marginal" means in the context of the function, thus I've
>     cc'd John
>     > Fox, who may be able to confirm whether or not this is Type II SS.
>     >
>     > Thanks!
>     >
>     > Justin
>     >
>     > On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com
>     <mailto:bbolker at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     >
>     > >
>     > > [I'm taking the liberty of cc'ing r-sig-mixed-models ... I strongly
>     > > prefer *not* to answer mixed models questions offline, for a
>     variety of
>     > > reasons.]
>     > >
>     > > On 12-12-03 02:12 PM, Justin Chase wrote:
>     > > > Hi there Dr. Bolker.
>     > > >
>     > > > I have a question regarding both your 2008 paper in TREE and your
>     > > > response to Helios de Rosario's mixed model question on the
>     > > > R-sig-mixed-models mailing list. I am analyzing count data
>     (transformed
>     > > > for normality) from a slightly unbalanced split-plot lab
>     experiment. I
>     > > > have two fixed factors, one whole-plot and one sub-plot, with
>     "plot" as
>     > > > random factor. the model looks like this:
>     > > >
>     > > > *y = µ + A_i + B_j + A*B_ij + C_k (B_i ) + A*C(B_i )_jk +
>     e_l(ijk) *
>     > > >
>     > > > I have been using the nlme package in R to test the
>     significance of
>     > > > fixed factors and their interaction on my univariate data,
>     following
>     > > > chapter 19 in The R Book (Crawley 2007).
>     > >
>     > >   I don't actually have Crawley's book (although I probably
>     should, if
>     > >   only to find out what he's telling people to do).
>     > >
>     > > > However, I'm not interested in
>     > > > analyzing coefficients of individual effects (treatment
>     levels) like
>     > > > Bates does, but just want a significance test for whole
>     factors. Because
>     > > > I don't want to prioritize either fixed factor, I prefer to
>     generate
>     > > > type II SS estimates. Like Helios de Rosario, I used the Anova
>     function
>     > > > in the car package to generate type II anova tables with
>     Wald's Chi
>     > > > Square test and P values (because the F test is not available
>     for this
>     > > > type of model). The results seem very reasonable and are fairly
>     > > > consistent with some least squares tests I've done on the same
>     data
>     > > > using aov (reordering terms to get "type II" results). I've
>     read your
>     > > > response to Helios's inquiry but unfortunately it was a bit
>     over my
>     > > > head. According to your paper in TREE, my data should be
>     analyzed with
>     > > > REML and F tests, but only Wald's X2 is available in R. Do you
>     think I'm
>     > > > on the right track or should I just forget about using REML
>     and analyze
>     > > > with aov on least squares fits (laboriously rearranging model
>     terms to
>     > > > get type II tests)?
>     > >
>     > >   Hmm.  Obviously I don't have your exact model, but I'm trying to
>     > > figure out what's wrong with, for example,
>     > >
>     > > library(nlme)
>     > > fm1 <- lme(distance ~ age, data = Orthodont) # random is ~ age
>     > > anova(fm1,type="marginal")
>     > >
>     > > ##             numDF denDF  F-value p-value
>     > > ## (Intercept)     1    80 467.4406  <.0001
>     > > ## age             1    80  85.8464  <.0001
>     > >
>     > > ?  see anova.lme
>     > >
>     > > Some of the complexity of the 2008 paper is due to the fact
>     > > that GLMMs are more challenging in several respects than LMMs.
>     > >
>     > > > Also, should I be testing for overdispersion when using the
>     Wald test,
>     > > > even though I'm just modelling Gaussian data with lme?
>     > >
>     > >   No. The Gaussian family has an adjustable scale parameter (i.e.,
>     > > the variance is estimated from the data, rather than [as in the
>     > > binomial or Poisson families] fixed at a theoretical value)
>     > >
>     > >
>     > >
>     >
>     >
>     > --
>     > *Justin W. Chase*
>     > MSc Candidate
>     > Canadian Rivers Institute
>     > University of New Brunswick
>     > 506-452-7474 <tel:506-452-7474> (home*)
>     > 506-453-4845 <tel:506-453-4845> (office)
>     > justinwchase1 at gmail.com <mailto:justinwchase1 at gmail.com>
>     > LinkedIn Profile <http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinwchase>
>     >
>     >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>     >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> *Justin W. Chase*
> MSc Candidate
> Canadian Rivers Institute
> University of New Brunswick
> 506-452-7474(home*)
> 506-453-4845(office)
> justinwchase1 at gmail.com <mailto:justinwchase1 at gmail.com>
> LinkedIn Profile <http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinwchase>
>



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