[R-sig-ME] "Multilevel Modeling Using R" and variance estimates

[Marko Bachl]

I think there is some confusion on which packages the authors talking
about in their book and in the erratum. The example on pages 44-45 in
the book reports output of lme() from the nlme package which does in
fact only include SD of the random effects.

However, I cannot comment on whether this confusion continues in the
whole book, I have just looked up the one page...



2014-10-30 15:25 GMT+01:00 Douglas Bates <bates at stat.wisc.edu>:
> I recently received an email advertisement from CRC Press which mentioned
> the recently published book "Multilevel Modeling Using R".  In the errata
> section of the web site for the book, http://www.mlminr.com/, the first
> erratum concerns the concerns the calculation of the intraclass correlation
> coefficient where the estimated standard deviations of the random effects
> and residuals are used instead of the estimated variances.
>
> The description of the erratum continues with the statements, "This error
> of using the standard deviation instead of the variance continues for
> several others examples. The lme4 package reports information on random
> effects in terms of the standard deviations, not in terms of the variances."
>
> I haven't looked at a copy of the book as it is not yet available at our
> library.  However, these statements seem peculiar to me.  Does the first
> sentence mean that the confusion of standard deviations and variances
> continues throughout the book?  If so, that seems like a rather fundamental
> mistake.
>
> Also, with regard to the lme4 package reporting standard deviations, not
> variances, I thought we reported both.  Is mistaking the column labelled
> Std. Dev. for variance estimates a common problem?
>
> Finally, most books with titles ending in "With R" or "Using R" provide an
> R package with the data.  The data in http://www.mlminr.com/data-sets are
> in CSV and SPSS formats.  Why SPSS?
>
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OUT NOW: Bachl, M. (2014). Analyse rezeptionsbegleitend gemessener
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Dr. Marko Bachl
Universität Hohenheim
Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft (540C)
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