The statistical model:

\(y_t = \beta_0 + \beta_1 * (Elevation_s)_t + \beta_2 * Slope_t + (b_s)_t + \epsilon_t\)

Where:

Let’s define the parameters:

nstand = 5
nplot = 4
b0 = -1
b1 = .005
b2 = .1
sds = 2
sd = 1

Simulate other variables:

set.seed(16)
stand = rep(LETTERS[1:nstand], each = nplot)
standeff = rep( rnorm(nstand, 0, sds), each = nplot)
ploteff = rnorm(nstand*nplot, 0, sd)

Simulate elevation and slope:

elevation = rep( runif(nstand, 1000, 1500), each = nplot)
slope = runif(nstand*nplot, 2, 75)

Simulate response variable:

resp2 = b0 + b1*elevation + b2*slope + standeff + ploteff 

Your tasks (complete each task in its’ own code chunk, make sure to use echo=TRUE so I can see your code):

  1. Fit a linear mixed model with the response variable as a function of elevation and slope with stand as a random effect. Are the estimated parameters similar to the intial parameters as we defined them?
# use this chunk to answer question 1

library(lme4)
## Loading required package: Matrix
library(Matrix)

fit1 <- lmer(resp2 ~ elevation + slope + (1|stand))

summary(fit1)
## Linear mixed model fit by REML ['lmerMod']
## Formula: resp2 ~ elevation + slope + (1 | stand)
## 
## REML criterion at convergence: 82
## 
## Scaled residuals: 
##      Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max 
## -1.65583 -0.62467 -0.01693  0.53669  1.41736 
## 
## Random effects:
##  Groups   Name        Variance Std.Dev.
##  stand    (Intercept) 1.208    1.099   
##  Residual             1.358    1.165   
## Number of obs: 20, groups:  stand, 5
## 
## Fixed effects:
##               Estimate Std. Error t value
## (Intercept) -21.314628   6.602053  -3.228
## elevation     0.020600   0.004916   4.190
## slope         0.095105   0.016441   5.785
## 
## Correlation of Fixed Effects:
##           (Intr) elevtn
## elevation -0.991       
## slope      0.049 -0.148
cat("b0 = ", b0, sep = "")
## b0 = -1
cat("b1 = ", b1, sep = "")
## b1 = 0.005
cat("b2 = ", b2, sep = "")
## b2 = 0.1
  1. Create a function for your model and run 1000 simulations of that model.
# use this chunk to answer question 2

library(purrr)

mod_fun = function(nstand = 5, nplot = 4, b0 = -1, b1 = 0.005, b2 = 0.1, sds = 2, sd = 1) {
  stand = rep(LETTERS[1:nstand], each = nplot)
  standeff = rep(rnorm(nstand, 0, sds), each = nplot)
  ploteff = rnorm(nstand * nplot, 0, sd)
  elevation = rep(runif(nstand, 1000, 1500), each = nplot)
  slope = runif(nstand * nplot, 2, 75)
  resp2 = b0 + b1 * elevation + b2 * slope + standeff + ploteff
  dat = data.frame(resp2, elevation, slope, stand)
  lmer(resp2 ~ elevation + slope + (1|stand), data = dat)
}
mod_fun()
## Linear mixed model fit by REML ['lmerMod']
## Formula: resp2 ~ elevation + slope + (1 | stand)
##    Data: dat
## REML criterion at convergence: 80.9781
## Random effects:
##  Groups   Name        Std.Dev.
##  stand    (Intercept) 2.3573  
##  Residual             0.9754  
## Number of obs: 20, groups:  stand, 5
## Fixed Effects:
## (Intercept)    elevation        slope  
##   10.584601    -0.005464     0.086839
sims1000 <- replicate(n = 1000, expr = mod_fun())
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
length(sims1000)
## [1] 1000
  1. Extract the stand and residual variances from this simulation run. Print the first 6 rows of the data.
# use this chunk to answer question 3

library(broom)

library(tidyverse)
## -- Attaching packages -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- tidyverse 1.3.0 --
## √ ggplot2 3.2.1     √ dplyr   0.8.4
## √ tibble  2.1.3     √ stringr 1.4.0
## √ tidyr   1.0.2     √ forcats 0.4.0
## √ readr   1.3.1
## -- Conflicts ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- tidyverse_conflicts() --
## x tidyr::expand() masks Matrix::expand()
## x dplyr::filter() masks stats::filter()
## x dplyr::lag()    masks stats::lag()
## x tidyr::pack()   masks Matrix::pack()
## x tidyr::unpack() masks Matrix::unpack()
variances <- sims1000 %>% 
  map_dfr(tidy, effects = "ran_pars", scales = "vcov")
variances %>% print(n = 6)
## # A tibble: 2,000 x 3
##   term                     group    estimate
##   <chr>                    <chr>       <dbl>
## 1 var_(Intercept).stand    stand       2.61 
## 2 var_Observation.Residual Residual    1.11 
## 3 var_(Intercept).stand    stand       9.73 
## 4 var_Observation.Residual Residual    1.36 
## 5 var_(Intercept).stand    stand       0.827
## 6 var_Observation.Residual Residual    0.914
## # ... with 1,994 more rows
  1. Choose three different sample sizes (your choice) and run 1000 model simulations with each sample size. Create 3 visualizations that compare distributions of the variances for each of the 3 sample sizes. Make sure that the axes are labelled correctly. What do these graphs say about the relationship between sample size and variance?
# use this chunk to answer question 4
library(ggplot2)
library(tidyverse)

smis3groups <- c(5, 25, 200) %>%
  set_names(c("sample_size = 5","sample_size = 25", "sample_size = 200" )) %>%
  map(~replicate(1000, mod_fun(nstand = .x) ) )
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
## boundary (singular) fit: see ?isSingular
variances3groups <- smis3groups %>%
     modify_depth(2, ~tidy(.x, effects = "ran_pars", scales = "vcov") ) %>%
     map_dfr(bind_rows, .id = "stand_num") %>%
     filter(group == "stand")

head(variances3groups)
## # A tibble: 6 x 4
##   stand_num       term                  group estimate
##   <chr>           <chr>                 <chr>    <dbl>
## 1 sample_size = 5 var_(Intercept).stand stand   12.0  
## 2 sample_size = 5 var_(Intercept).stand stand    6.84 
## 3 sample_size = 5 var_(Intercept).stand stand    2.89 
## 4 sample_size = 5 var_(Intercept).stand stand    2.52 
## 5 sample_size = 5 var_(Intercept).stand stand    0.966
## 6 sample_size = 5 var_(Intercept).stand stand    2.91
ggplot(variances3groups, aes(x = estimate) ) +
     geom_density(fill = "red", alpha = .25) +
     facet_wrap(~stand_num) +
     geom_vline(xintercept = 4)

med_var3groups = variances3groups %>%
  group_by(stand_num) %>%
  summarise(mvar = median(estimate))

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(variances3groups, aes(x = estimate)) +
  geom_density(fill = "orange", alpha = 0.25) +
  facet_wrap(~stand_num) +
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = 4, linetype = " True Variance"), size = 0.5) + 
  geom_vline(data = med_var3groups, aes(xintercept = mvar, linetype = "Median Variance"),size = 0.5)

  1. Plot the coefficients of the estimates of elevation and slope. Hint: the x-axis should have 1000 values. Discuss the graphs.
library(furrr)
## Loading required package: future
library(ggplot2)

coef3groups <- sims1000 %>% 
  future_map(tidy, effects = "fixed") %>% 
  bind_rows()

coef3groups
## # A tibble: 3,000 x 4
##    term        estimate std.error statistic
##    <chr>          <dbl>     <dbl>     <dbl>
##  1 (Intercept) -15.9      5.63       -2.83 
##  2 elevation     0.0152   0.00426     3.57 
##  3 slope         0.121    0.0157      7.73 
##  4 (Intercept) -13.9     13.3        -1.05 
##  5 elevation     0.0156   0.0117      1.33 
##  6 slope         0.124    0.0166      7.48 
##  7 (Intercept) -12.3      4.45       -2.75 
##  8 elevation     0.0130   0.00336     3.87 
##  9 slope         0.0937   0.0100      9.32 
## 10 (Intercept) -11.9     21.4        -0.556
## # ... with 2,990 more rows
coef3groups %>% 
  dplyr::filter(term %in% c("elevation", "slope")) %>% 
  group_by(term) %>% 
  mutate(x = 1 : 1000) %>%
  ungroup() %>% 
  mutate(real_value = ifelse(term == "elevation", 0.005, 0.1)) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = x, y = estimate)) +
  geom_line() +
  facet_wrap(~term) +
  geom_hline(aes(yintercept = real_value, color = term), linetype = 4, size = 0.5) +
  theme_bw()