How to test joint parameter hypothesis in multinomial logit regression R? - r

I am trying to test the hypothesis of market efficiency in bookmaker odds for football matches. I have estimated a multinomial logit model with the mlogit package:
Model: outcome=log(P1/Px)+log(P2/Px)
where P1 is the implicit bookie probability of a home win, Px is the implicit bookie probability of a draw, etc. Draw (x) is the reference category.
Now I want to use a likelihood-based test (LR,Wald or LM) for the following hypothesis:
H0: β1=(0,1,0), β2=(0,0,1)
Ie: under the null hypothesis the intercept coefficient is 0 for both regressions. The coefficient for the logit of home win is 1 when y=homewin, and 0 when y=away win. The coefficient for the logit of away win is 0 when y=home win, and 1 when y=away win.
I am having trouble understanding how to fit the constrained model (the H0-model), from which I would extract a loglikelihood to compare with the ditto received from the ML-estimated model in an LR-test.
I have tried following the instructions from page 57 here:
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/mlogit/vignettes/mlogit.pdf
but I don't understand how to specify my H0-model using the update()-function. Is it possible?
If you know how to do an equivalent test using the nnet (multinom) package, perhaps using "offset", an explanation of how to do that would also be very appreciated.
Thanks for any help!

I now understand that I did not need to fit a constrained model with fixed parameter values (the H0-model) to extract the loglikelihood value under the null hypothesis.
If the null hypothesis is true, the log likelihood will be:
sum(ln(Pj)),
where j is the actual outcome of the game and P is the implicit bookmaker probability.

Related

Does the function multinom() from R's nnet package fit a multinomial logistic regression, or a Poisson regression?

The documentation for the multinom() function from the nnet package in R says that it "[f]its multinomial log-linear models via neural networks" and that "[t]he response should be a factor or a matrix with K columns, which will be interpreted as counts for each of K classes." Even when I go to add a tag for nnet on this question, the description says that it is software for fitting "multinomial log-linear models."
Granting that statistics has wildly inconsistent jargon that is rarely operationally defined by whoever is using it, the documentation for the function even mentions having a count response and so seems to indicate that this function is designed to model count data. Yet virtually every resource I've seen treats it exclusively as if it were fitting a multinomial logistic regression. In short, everyone interprets the results in terms of logged odds relative to the reference (as in logistic regression), not in terms of logged expected count (as in what is typically referred to as a log-linear model).
Can someone clarify what this function is actually doing and what the fitted coefficients actually mean?
nnet::multinom is fitting a multinomial logistic regression as I understand...
If you check the source code of the package, https://github.com/cran/nnet/blob/master/R/multinom.R and https://github.com/cran/nnet/blob/master/R/nnet.R, you will see that the multinom function is indeed using counts (which is a common thing to use as input for a multinomial regression model, see also the MGLM or mclogit package e.g.), and that it is fitting the multinomial regression model using a softmax transform to go from predictions on the additive log-ratio scale to predicted probabilities. The softmax transform is indeed the inverse link scale of a multinomial regression model. The way the multinom model predictions are obtained, cf.predictions from nnet::multinom, is also exactly as you would expect for a multinomial regression model (using an additive log-ratio scale parameterization, i.e. using one outcome category as a baseline).
That is, the coefficients predict the logged odds relative to the reference baseline category (i.e. it is doing a logistic regression), not the logged expected counts (like a log-linear model).
This is shown by the fact that model predictions are calculated as
fit <- nnet::multinom(...)
X <- model.matrix(fit) # covariate matrix / design matrix
betahat <- t(rbind(0, coef(fit))) # model coefficients, with expicit zero row added for reference category & transposed
preds <- mclustAddons::softmax(X %*% betahat)
Furthermore, I verified that the vcov matrix returned by nnet::multinom matches that when I use the formula for the vcov matrix of a multinomial regression model, Faster way to calculate the Hessian / Fisher Information Matrix of a nnet::multinom multinomial regression in R using Rcpp & Kronecker products.
Is it not the case that a multinomial regression model can always be reformulated as a Poisson loglinear model (i.e. as a Poisson GLM) using the Poisson trick (glmnet e.g. uses the Poisson trick to fit multinomial regression models as a Poisson GLM)?

Comparing AIC for different types of models (beta and normal)

I have responses which are proportions mainly centered around 0.6-0.7, and not many of them are close to 0 or 1. I have tried fitting both normal and beta models, and the normal models yield lower AIC than the beta models. I use the lm package for fitting the normal model, and betareg for the beta model.
But I wonder it if it really possible to compare AIC values for different model types like that? I do of course use the same response variables and the same data for both regressions.
Note: I tried to read about Kullback-Leibler divergence here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4049836 (name: The AIC Criterion and Symmetrizing the Kullback–Leibler Divergence), but got confused by this sentence on page two: "It is also assumed as in [12] that the search is carried out in a parametric family of distribution including the true model.", where [12] refers to Akaikes article from 1974. Does this imply that I cannot compare the AIC from a beta and a normal model, as the true model cannot be both beta and normal?
Note 2: I tried to logit-transform the responses and then fit a normal model, but that just made the residual plots look worse.

Can I test autocorrelation from the generalized least squares model?

I am trying to use a generalized least square model (gls in R) on my panel data to deal with autocorrelation problem.
I do not want to have any lags for any variables.
I am trying to use Durbin-Watson test (dwtest in R) to check the autocorrelation problem from my generalized least square model (gls).
However, I find that the dwtest is not applicable over gls function while it is applicable to other functions such as lm.
Is there a way to check the autocorrelation problem from my gls model?
Durbin-Watson test is designed to check for presence of autocorrelation in standard least-squares models (such as one fitted by lm). If autocorrelation is detected, one can then capture it explicitly in the model using, for example, generalized least squares (gls in R). My understanding is that Durbin-Watson is not appropriate to then test for "goodness of fit" in the resulting models, as gls residuals may no longer follow the same distribution as residuals from the standard lm model. (Somebody with deeper knowledge of statistics should correct me, if I'm wrong).
With that said, function durbinWatsonTest from the car package will accept arbitrary residuals and return the associated test statistic. You can therefore do something like this:
v <- gls( ... )$residuals
attr(v,"std") <- NULL # get rid of the additional attribute
car::durbinWatsonTest( v )
Note that durbinWatsonTest will compute p-values only for lm models (likely due to the considerations described above), but you can estimate them empirically by permuting your data / residuals.

How to report overall results of an nlme mixed effects model

I want to report the results of an one factorial lme from the nlme package. I want to know the overall effect of A on y. To do so I would compare the model with a Null model:
m1 <- lme(y~A,random=~1|B/C,data=data,weights=varIdent(form = ~1|A),method="ML")
m0 <- lme(y~1,random=~1|B/C,data=data,weights=varIdent(form = ~1|A),method="ML")
I am using maximum likelihood because I am comparing models with different main effects.
stats::anova(m0,m1) gives me a significant p value, meaning that there is a significant effect of A on y. However, in contrast to lmer models made with lme4, no Chi2 values are given. First: Is this approach valid? And second: What is the best way to report the result?
Thanks for your answers
An anova with lme should give you the same information as with lmer. Both use what's called a deviance test or likelihood ratio test. The L.ratio part in the table returned by anova is simply the difference in the loglikelihood of the two models multiplied by -2. A deviance test tests this value against a Chi2 distribution with the difference in model parameters (in your case 1) degrees of freedom. So the value reported under L.ratio for lme models is the same as the Chi2 value reported for lmer models (assuming the models are the same of course, and lmer rounds the value to a decimal).
The approach is valid and you could report the value under L.ratio along with the degrees of freedom and p-value, but I would add more information in your report such as the fixed and random coefficients of both models and other parameters that you've added (such as the difference in variance for levels of A specified under weights). If you're only interested in the fixed effect of A than a Wald test should also be appropriate though REML estimates are recommended in cases with a small number of groups (Snijders & Bosker, 2012). The test statistic is the t-value and associated p-value in the model summary output summary(m1). Chapter 6 in Snijders & Bosker (2012) gives a great explanation on tests for fixed and random parameters. Along with reporting examples.

finding p-value from goodness of fit test in fitdistrplus package in r

I want to fit a distribution to my data. I use fitdistrplus package in r to find the distribution. I can compare the goodness of fit results for different distributions to see which one is more fitted to my data but I don't know how to check the pvalue for goodness of fit test for each of the distributions. The results might show that among gamma, lognormal and exponential, exponential distribution has the lower statistics for anderson darling test but I don't know how to check if pvalue for these tests does not reject the null hypothesis. Is there any built in function in R which gives the pvalues?
Here is a piece of code I used as an example:
d <- sample(100,50)
library(fitdistrplus)
descdist(d)
fitg <- fitdist(d,"gamma")
fitg2 <- fitdist(d,"exp")
gofstat(list(fitg,fitg2))
This code makes 50 random numbers from 0 to 100 and tries to find best fitted model to these data. If descdist(d) shows that gamma and exponential are the two candidates as the best fitted model, fitg and fitg2 finds their related models. the last line compares Ks and anderson darling statistics to show which distribution is most fitted. Distribution with lower value for these tests is the best. However, I dont know how to find p-values for fitg and fitg2 before comparying them. If pvalues show that none of these distributions are not fitted to these data, there is no point to comparing their goodness of fit statistics to my knowledge.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks

Resources