How shall one present LRT test statistic in a scientific journal ?

David Winsemius wrote:

On Nov 26, 2009, at 12:14 PM, JVezilier wrote:

Hello !!

I'm recently having a debate with my PhD supervisor regarding how to
write
the result of a likelihood ratio test in an article I'm about to  
submit.

I analysed my data using "lme" mixed modelling.

To get some p-values for my fixed effect I used model simplification
and the
typical output R gives looks like this:

model2 = update ( model1,~.-factor A)
anova (model1, model2)

     Model df       AIC             BIC         logLik         Test
L.Ratio     p-value
model 1     1 26  -78.73898   15.29707     65.36949
model 2     2 20  -73.70539   -1.36997     56.85270   1 vs 2     
17.03359
0.0092

I thought about presenting it very simply copying/pasting R table  
and
writing it like: "factor A had a significant effect on the response
variable
(Likelihood ratio test, L-ratio = 17.033, p = 0.0092)"

But my boss argued that it's too unusual (at least in our field of
evolutionary biology) and that I should present instead the LR  
statistic
together with the corresponding Chi^2 statistic since the likelihood
ratio
is almost distributed like a Chi2 (df1-df2), and then write down the
p-value
corresponding to this value of Chi.

I looked up in the current litterature but cannot really find a  
proper
answer to that dilmena.

So, dear evolutionary biologists R users, how would you present it ?

I am not an evolutionary biologist, but presumably your supervisor is
one. Why are you picking a fight not only with him but with your
prospective audience when there is no meaningful difference? Here  
is the
p-value you would get with his method:

1-pchisq( 2*(65.36949 -  56.85270), df=6)

[1] 0.009160622

As I understood the question, it *is* purely formalistic. I.e., what  
to
write, not what to do.

I'd say "L-ratio" is plain wrong, since this is not a ratio, but the  
log
of a ratio. "-2lnQ" or "-2logQ" is what my old teachers would write,  
but
pragmatically, I'd expect the best chances with editors and  
reviewers to
be "LRT: chi-square=17.03, df=6, p=0.092", possibly with LRT spelled
out. (Some journals like to have the df because it allows reviewers to
catch glaring mistakes like categorical variables treated as numeric.)