In lehmansociology/lehmansociology: Tools for Sociology Students Using R

In this document we will be constructing confidence intervals using R instead of statkey or using hand calculations.

This assumes that you have saved your mysample1 and mysample2 data sets to the data folder. If you haven't done that you should do so before starting using this code in your console:

save(mysample1, file = "data/mysample1.RData")
save(mysample2, file = "data/mysample2.RData")

Now read the file. You will need to get the "full path" to your data files. You can do this by going to file Files tab and finding the file and clicking on their name. Look at the load command that apppears in your console.
Change the lines below to what is shown.

load(file = "change to your mysample1 file")
load(file = "change to your mysample2 file")

# Load your libraries here

library('lehmansociology')
library(ggplot2)

library(resample)

The code below creates a boot strap sample of the mean

# This example takes 1000 samples and calculates a 95% Confidence Interval (the default)
# for the mean.
result1 <- bootstrap(mysample1, mean(PCTPOVALL_2013, na.rm = TRUE), R = 1000)
CI.bca(result1)

# To get a 90% Confidence interval do this
CI.bca(result1, probs = c(0.05, 0.95))

#Now on your own get a 99% confidence interval

Explain in your own words why a 95% confindence interval would be displayed with the labels 2.5% and 97.5%.

How is a 99% confidence interval labelled? Why is that?

Where to the values for "probs = " come from?

Copy and paste your code so that you get at least 9 different confidence intervals. You should: use at least two confidence levels and use at least two different values for number of samples. For example you could try 5000 or 500.

How did the estimates change when you changed your parameter values?

Now get at least 9 confidence intervals for the median and standard deviation. Make sure to change the confidence level and the number of samples.

What patterns do you notice?

How did your results compare to the results from statkey?

Now we will use the traditional (parametric) way of calculating confidence intervals in R using the t statistic. We will only do this for the mean.

Calculate the 90, 95 and 99 percent confidence intervals.

ci1 <- t.test(mysample1$PCTPOVALL_2013, conf.level = 0.90)
ci1$conf.int

How do these numbers compare to the values you got in the previous lab by using the formulas?

How do these values compare to the bootstrap values?

We can also get confidence intervals for our slope estimates. The default is for a 95% confidence interval. Here is the code for mysample1, add your own for mysample2.

reg1 <- lm(PCTPOVALL_2013 ~  Percent.of.adults.with.a.bachelor.s.degree.or.higher..2009.2013, data = mysample1)
confint(reg1)

Do your confidence intervals include the actual slope from the full county data set (which is -0.33677)?

One way we can see the impact of adding a confidence interval to a regression analysis is by adding an error ribbon around the regression line in a scatter plot. Make a second plot using mysample2.

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(mysample1,
       aes(x=Percent.of.adults.with.a.bachelor.s.degree.or.higher..2009.2013,
           y=PCTPOVALL_2013)) +
  geom_point() +
  stat_smooth(method = lm) +
  ggtitle("Fig # : Poverty Rate and Median Income (for Counties)") +
  labs(x = "Percent with Bachelors Degree or Higher",  
       y="Percent of population in poverty")