Have you read Pinheiro and Bates (2000) Mixed-Effects Models in S
and S-Plus (Springer)? I learned a lot from this book and recommend it
very highly.
Probably the most obvious difference is that ML estimates of
variance components are biased. The bias is equivalent to estimating
the variance of a population by dividing the sum of squared deviations
from the sample mean of N observations by N rather than N-1.
To check for other differences, I just did library(mle4) in R
1.9.1 and ran the example in help("lme") then ran the same lme call
with
method="ML". The results (see below) show that the parameter
estimates
for the fixed effects are the same for ML as for REML, but the estimates
of standard errors of those parameters seems to perpetuate the bias
corrected by REML.
If stepAIC works with ML but not with REML, I would use stepAIC
with ML then reestimate the final model with REML. However, I would
also do some simulations to estimate the false positive (Type I) error
rate. AIC includes a penalty for the complexity of the model but NOT
for the number of alternatives considered, and if you present enough
random alternatives to the procedure, it will find some that are
statistically significant. The nlme package contains a function
"simulate.lme" to facilitate this.
hope this helps. spencer graves
> library(lme4)
> data(bdf)
> fm <- lme(langPOST ~ IQ.ver.cen + avg.IQ.ver.cen, data = bdf,
+ random = ~ IQ.ver.cen | schoolNR)
> summary(fm)
Linear mixed-effects model fit by REML
Fixed: langPOST ~ IQ.ver.cen + avg.IQ.ver.cen
Data: bdf
AIC BIC logLik
15231.87 15272.02 -7608.937
Random effects:
Groups Name Variance Std.Dev. Corr
schoolNR (Intercept) 8.07563 2.84177
IQ.ver.cen 0.20801 0.45608 -0.642
Residual 41.34968 6.43037
# of obs: 2287, groups: schoolNR, 131
Fixed effects:
Estimate Std. Error DF t value Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept) 4.0750e+01 2.8808e-01 2284 141.452 < 2.2e-16 ***
IQ.ver.cen 2.4598e+00 8.3638e-02 2284 29.410 < 2.2e-16 ***
avg.IQ.ver.cen 1.4089e+00 3.2374e-01 2284 4.352 1.409e-05 ***
---
Signif. codes: 0 `***' 0.001 `**' 0.01 `*' 0.05 `.' 0.1 ` '
1
Correlation of Fixed Effects:
(Intr) IQ.vr.
IQ.ver.cen -0.274
avg.IQ.vr.c 0.029 -0.213
> fm.ml <- lme(langPOST ~ IQ.ver.cen + avg.IQ.ver.cen, data = bdf,
+ random = ~ IQ.ver.cen | schoolNR, method="ML")
> summary(fm.ml)
Linear mixed-effects model fit by maximum likelihood
Fixed: langPOST ~ IQ.ver.cen + avg.IQ.ver.cen
Data: bdf
AIC BIC logLik
15227.53 15267.68 -7606.767
Random effects:
Groups Name Variance Std.Dev. Corr
schoolNR (Intercept) 7.91904 2.81408
IQ.ver.cen 0.20006 0.44728 -0.652
Residual 41.35055 6.43044
# of obs: 2287, groups: schoolNR, 131
Fixed effects:
Estimate Std. Error DF t value Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept) 4.0750e+01 2.8610e-01 2284 142.4342 < 2.2e-16 ***
IQ.ver.cen 2.4589e+00 8.3237e-02 2284 29.5406 < 2.2e-16 ***
avg.IQ.ver.cen 1.4052e+00 3.2168e-01 2284 4.3683 1.308e-05 ***
---
Signif. codes: 0 `***' 0.001 `**' 0.01 `*' 0.05 `.' 0.1 ` '
1
Correlation of Fixed Effects:
(Intr) IQ.vr.
IQ.ver.cen -0.274
avg.IQ.vr.c 0.028 -0.214
#######################
Klaus Thul wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>I am planning to use nlme library for analysis of experiments in
semiconductor
>industry. Currently I am using "lm" but plan to move to
"lme" to handle
>within wafer / wafer-to-wafer and lot-to-lot variation correctly.
>
>So far everything is working well, but I have a fundamentel question:
>
>NLME offers "maximum likelihood" and "restricted maximum
likelihood" for
>parameter estimation. ML has the advantage, that likelihood ratios can be
>computed even with changes in model structure. In addition, ML works with
the
>stepAIC function from MASS-library which I am currently using for
>model-building.
>
>I am wondering, why REML is the default setting in NLME and therefore
somehow
>preferred by the authors. What is the main reason to use REML?
>
>Maybe I am lacking here statistical knowledge. Any hint, including reference
>to literature would be very helpful.
>
>Best regards,
>Klaus Thul
>
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>
>
--
Spencer Graves, PhD, Senior Development Engineer
O: (408)938-4420; mobile: (408)655-4567