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MCMCglmm, priorR and binomial distribution

2 messages · Camille Madec, Jarrod Hadfield

#
Dear everyone,

I have a model with 2 fixed factors, 1 random factor and a binary  
response variable. I ran a MCMCglmm with family=?categorical? and the  
prior for the residual being R=list(V=1, nu=0.002). In the summary of  
the model I got high post.mean values (around 50 for fixed effects and  
 >1000 for random effects and sometimes up to 14000).
I ran the same model with R=list(V=1, fix=1) which means that the  
variance of the residual is fixed to 1, so the residual becomes a  
fixed factor (if I understand correctly). In that case my post.mean  
values are smaller (between zero and 24).

My questions are:
1) Are the large values in the first case normal?
2) How do I know which prior is the more appropriate for the residual?

Bests,
Camille

-----
Camille Madec
PhD student
Plant Ecology and Evolution
Uppsala University
Sweden
#
Hi Camille,

The second prior is the correct one. The residual variance is not  
identifiable in the likelihood for binary data: I have tried to  
explain this intuitively in Section 2.6 of the CourseNotes using a  
tasteless example of hospital deaths.

Cheers,

Jarrod



Quoting Camille Madec <camille.madec at ebc.uu.se> on Thu, 31 Jan 2013  
15:21:12 +0100: