[R] Comparing each level of a factor to the global mean

David Winsemius dwinsemius at comcast.net
Fri Jun 28 03:08:56 CEST 2013


On Jun 27, 2013, at 3:47 PM, Shaun Jackman wrote:

> Hi Jean,
> 
> contr.treatment(4) shows what the default contrast matrix looks like
> for a factor with 4 levels. What function do I use to create a
> contrast matrix to compare each level with the global mean (four
> comparisons in total), and produce a table similar to `summary.lm`?
> 

I believe you asking for "contr.sum" although I think there might be some differences between how it operates and what you are expressing as your expectations.

> contrasts(ChickWeight$Diet) <- contr.sum(4)
> model <- lm(weight ~ Diet, ChickWeight)
> summary(model)

Call:
lm(formula = weight ~ Diet, data = ChickWeight)

Residuals:
    Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
-103.95  -53.65  -13.64   40.38  230.05 

Coefficients:
            Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)  125.869      2.986  42.150  < 2e-16 ***
Diet1        -23.223      4.454  -5.214 2.59e-07 ***
Diet2         -3.252      5.380  -0.604  0.54576    
Diet3         17.081      5.380   3.175  0.00158 ** 
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 69.33 on 574 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.05348,	Adjusted R-squared:  0.04853 
F-statistic: 10.81 on 3 and 574 DF,  p-value: 6.433e-07

> mean(ChickWeight$weight)
[1] 121.8183
> table(ChickWeight$Diet)

  1   2   3   4 
220 120 120 118 

So in an unbalanced data situation, the Intercept is only approximately the grand mean.

To see what you are requesting in the summary you can an offset from the mean and use the Intercept suppression syntax:

> model <- lm(weight ~ Diet+0+offset(rep(mean(ChickWeight$weight), nrow(ChickWeight) )), ChickWeight)
> summary(model)

Call:
lm(formula = weight ~ Diet + 0 + offset(rep(mean(ChickWeight$weight), 
    nrow(ChickWeight))), data = ChickWeight)

Residuals:
    Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
-103.95  -53.65  -13.64   40.38  230.05 

Coefficients:
      Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
Diet1 -19.1729     4.6740  -4.102 4.69e-05 ***
Diet2   0.7983     6.3286   0.126 0.899660    
Diet3  21.1317     6.3286   3.339 0.000895 ***
Diet4  13.4444     6.3820   2.107 0.035584 *  
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Residual standard error: 69.33 on 574 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared:  0.7599,	Adjusted R-squared:  0.7583 
F-statistic: 454.3 on 4 and 574 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

Notice this does estimate waht you requested, but I think it is more due to the use of an offset than to the choice of contrasts.

> with(ChickWeight, tapply(weight, Diet, function(categ) mean(categ)- mean(weight) ) )
          1           2           3           4 
-19.1728846   0.7983276  21.1316609  13.4443728 


I'm very worried this might be inferentially suspect, since the degrees of freedom and the anava F statistic are different than the usual methods.
-- 
David.

> Thanks,
> Shaun
> 
> 
> On 26 June 2013 05:50, Adams, Jean <jvadams at usgs.gov> wrote:
>> Shaun,
>> 
>> See the help on contrasts ...
>>     ?contr.treatment
>> 
>> Jean
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 7:07 PM, Shaun Jackman <sjackman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I've used `lm` to create a linear model of a continuous variable
>>> against a factor variable with four levels using an example R data set
>>> (see below). By default, it uses a treatment contrast matrix that
>>> compares each level of the factor variable with the first reference
>>> level (three comparisons in total). I'd like to compare each level
>>> with the global mean (four comparisons in total), and produce a table
>>> similar to `summary.lm`. How do I go about this?
>>> 
>>> ```r
>>> model <- lm(weight ~ Diet, ChickWeight)
>>> summary(model)
>>> ```
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Shaun
>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>> 
>> 
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA



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