[model description by chatGPT (to update), will run model and associated outputs following race 5]
The hierarchical model used in this analysis is structured as follows:
Let \(y_i\) represent the observed data for the \(i\)-th observation, and \(\mu_i\) represent the underlying true value for that observation.
For each observation \(i\) (ranging from 1 to \(N\)), \(\mu_i\) is assumed to follow a normal distribution with mean \(\mu_{\text{group}}[i]\), where \(\mu_{\text{group}}[i]\) is a group-specific mean corresponding to the group of the \(i\)-th observation. The variance of this normal distribution is \(\tau_{\text{group}}[i]\), representing the group-specific variance.
Additionally, the observed data \(y_i\) is assumed to follow a normal distribution with mean \(\mu_i\) and a common variance parameter \(\tau\).
The group-specific means \(\mu_{\text{group}}[i]\) are assumed to follow a normal distribution with mean \(\mu_{\text{prior}}\) and variance \(\tau_{\mu}\).
The hyperparameters \(\sigma\) and \(\sigma_{\mu}\) represent the standard deviations for the common variance \(\tau\) and the group-specific means’ variance \(\tau_{\mu}\) respectively.
The priors for \(\sigma\) and \(sigma_{\mu}\) are specified as uniform distributions between 0 and 100.
The prior for \(\mu_{\text{prior}}\) is assumed to be a normal distribution with mean 0 and a very small variance to reflect little prior information about the group means.
The hierarchical model aims to estimate the group-specific means and variances, as well as the common variance parameter, using the observed data and specified prior distributions.