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Curved residuals vs fitted plot

Hi Paul,

Thank you for reading my email and for providing clear explanation of why I have the curvature. I found your response and the link very helpful. Sadly I am having trouble getting the R book which is not available at my library, but I do have a copy of the Mixed Effects Models and Extensions in Ecology with R by Zuur.

I now understand the fitted vs resid plots produce curved scatter trends due to the observational random effect and have implemented the code you provided to shift the effect from the fitted values to the residuals to create a new plot (see here http://imgur.com/edit).

My plot is not nearly as well behaved as your example though, with a steep tail of residuals with high fitted values. Does this mean my model is a bad fit? I'm not sure of the next best move to take.

I have tried the following (all with the observational random effect, Bait.ID, to remove overdispersion but with similar resid vs fitted plots as seen on the web-link):

1. glmer
2. glmer + polynomial regression (logDistance factor) 
3. glmer + quadratic term (Distance^2)
4. gamm (limited success)

Is there another way to remove overdispersion or account for it? Or am I going about this wrong?

Thank you once again for taking time to help me. I really appreciate it,

Victoria
______________
Victoria Wickens
PhD student
Room GU08
Centre for Agri-Environmental Research (CAER)
School of Agriculture, Policy & Development
University of Reading
Reading RG6 7BE
____________

Email: v.j.wickens at pgr.reading.ac.uk
http://www.reading.ac.uk/caer/staff_students.html
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