# Check perfect model In brokenstick: Broken Stick Model for Irregular Longitudinal Data

knitr::opts_chunkset(echo = TRUE)  ## Objective In general, the broken stick model smoothes the observed growth trajectory. What happens of all observations are already aligned to the break ages? Does the model perfectly represent the data? Is the covariance matrix of the random effects (\Omega)$equal to the covariance between the measurements? Is$\sigma^2$equal to zero? ## Data generation We adapt code from http://www.davekleinschmidt.com/sst-mixed-effects-simulation/simulations_slides.pdf to generate test data: library("plyr") library("mvtnorm") make_data_generator <- function(resid_var = 1, ranef_covar = diag(c(1, 1)), n = 100 ) { ni <- nrow(ranef_covar) generate_data <- function() { # sample data set under mixed effects model with random slope/intercepts simulated_data <- rdply(n, { b <- t(rmvnorm(n = 1, sigma = ranef_covar)) epsilon <- rnorm(n = length(b), mean = 0, sd = sqrt(resid_var)) b + epsilon }) data.frame( subject = rep(1:n, each = ni), age = rep(1:ni, n), simulated_data) } }  Let us first model the perfect situation where$\sigma^2 = 0(so we set resid_var to zero) and where the ages align perfectly. set.seed(77711) covar <- matrix(c(1, 0.7, 0.5, 0.3, 0.7, 1, 0.8, 0.5, 0.5, 0.8, 1, 0.6, 0.3, 0.5, 0.6, 1), nrow = 4) gen_dat <- make_data_generator(n = 10000, ranef_covar = covar, resid_var = 1) data <- gen_dat() head(data)  Check the correlation matrix of they$'s. library("tidyr") library("dplyr") d <- as_tibble(data[,-3]) broad <- t(spread(d, subject, X1))[-1,] cor(broad)  ## Fit model Fit broken stick model, with knots specified at ages 1:4. library("brokenstick") knots <- 1:3 boundary <- c(1, 4) fit <- brokenstick(X1 ~ age | subject, data, knots = knots, boundary = boundary) omega <- fit$omega
beta <- fit$beta sigma2 <- fit$sigma2
round(beta, 2)
round(sigma2, 4)

# correlation random effects
round(covar, 3)
round(omega, 2)

# covariances measured data
round(omega + diag(sigma2, 4), 3)

# convert to time-to-time correlation matrix
round(cov2cor(omega + diag(sigma2, 4)), 3)


## Conclusions

1. If $\sigma^2=0$, then $\Omega$ reproduces correlations between $y$'s correctly. However, the estimate of $\sigma^2$ is too high.
2. If $\sigma^2 > 0$, then $\Omega$ overestimates the correlations between $y$'s, but correctly estimates the covariance among the random effects.
3. If $\sigma^2 > 0$, then $\Omega + \hat\sigma^2 I(n_i)$ correctly estimates the covariances between $y$'s. This can be converted by cov2cor() to the time-to-time correlation matrix.

• Main functions

• Plot trajectories
• Orginal scale and $Z$-score scale
• 1-line model
• 2-line broken stick model
• 9-line broken stick model
• Prediction
• Subject-level analysis
• Broken Stick Model for Irregular Longitudinal Data

• Irregular observation times
• Literature overview
• Definition of the model
• Interpretation of the model
• Estimation by lmer and kr methods
• Software overview
• brokenstick() for model fitting
• predict() for trajectory plotting
• Conversion back and forth to the $Z$-score scale
• Predict growth curve of new subjects
• Assess the quality of the model
• Knot placement strategies
• Critical periods
• Time-to-time correlations
• Profile analysis
• Curve interpolation
• Multiple imputation
• Curve matching
• Discussion
• Help for old friends

• Properties of the perfect model
• Estimating time-to-time correlations

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brokenstick documentation built on Nov. 2, 2020, 5:07 p.m.