Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models

Simple methods from introductory statistics have three important roles in regression and multilevel modeling. First, simple probability distributions are the building blocks for elaborate models. Second, multilevel models are generalizations of classical complete-pooling and no-pooling estimates, and so it is important to understand where these classical estimates come from. Third, it is often useful in practice to construct quick confidence intervals and hypothesis tests for small parts of a problem—before fitting an elaborate model, or in understanding the output from such a model.

This chapter provides a quick review of some of these methods.

Probability distributions

A probability distribution corresponds to an urn with a potentially infinite number of balls inside. When a ball is drawn at random, the “random variable” is what is written on this ball.

Areas of application of probability distributions include:

• Distributions of data (for example, heights of men, heights of women, heights of adults), for which we use the notation yi, i = 1, …, n.

• Distributions of parameter values, for which we use the notation θj, j = 1, …, J, or other Greek letters such as α, β, γ. We shall see many of these with the multilevel models in Part 2 of the book. For now, consider a regression model (for example, predicting students' grades from pre-test scores) fit separately in each of several schools. The coefficients of the separate regressions can be modeled as following a distribution, which can be estimated from data.

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