Thursday, June 29, 2017

Difference of means for paired data: Model the mean of the differences or the joint distribution

I'm regularly asked about how to analyze the difference of means for paired data, such as pre-treatment and post-treatment scores (for the same subjects), or, say, blood pressures of spouses, etc. The usual approach is merely to consider the difference scores (e.g., post minus pre for each subject) and examine the mean of the differences. But we could also consider the joint distribution of the paired scores and describe the joint distribution as, say, a bivariate normal. In this post I'll show you how to do both. I'll illustrate with both positively correlated pairs and negatively correlated pairs.

Suppose we have positively correlated pairs of scores (e.g., if the pre-treatment score is higher than average, then the post-treatment score tends to be higher than average; or, if one person's relationship satisfaction is higher than average, then his/her spouse's relationship satisfaction tends to be higher than average).

We can describe the joint distribution as a bivariate normal, and then consider the posterior distribution of the difference of means, as shown below:




The red crosses (above) mark the arithmetic means in the data.

The script for generating the plots above is appended at the end of this post. It is merely a variation of the script for multivariate normals posted on this blog a few days ago.

Alternatively, we could consider the single group of difference scores. Here I'll use the BEST package, but we could also use the script Jags-Ymet-Xnom1grp-Mnormal-Example.R or Jags-Ymet-Xnom1grp-Mrobust-Example.R from DBDA2E.The result:

Notice that the posterior of the mean of the difference scores (from BEST) is essentially the same as the posterior of the difference of means from the previous analysis. The small discrepancies between the two analyses stem from two sources: First, there is MCMC wobble. Second, the BEST package models the data with a t distribution not a normal. In this case the simulated data are generated from a normal so the normality parameter is estimated to be large anyway.


Suppose instead we have negatively correlated pairs of scores (e.g., if one person's job satisfaction is higher than average, then his/her spouse's job satisfaction tends to be lower than average).

We can describe the joint distribution as a bivariate normal, and then consider the posterior distribution of the difference of means, as shown below:




Notice that these negatively-correlated data have exactly the same arithmetic difference of means and exactly the same variances as the data in the previous example. The only difference is the correlation. Now, for negatively correlated pairs, the estimated difference of means is essentially the same as for the previous data (only MCMC wobble makes the mode discrepant), but the estimate is much less certain, with a much wider HDI.

Analyzing the mean of the differences scores yields the same result:

The R script for generating the plots is appended below, but first,

Reminders of some recent posts:



Appendix: R script used for this post:


#----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Jags-DifferenceOfPairedScores.R
# John Kruschke, June 2017.
# For further info, see:
# Kruschke, J. K. (2015). Doing Bayesian Data Analysis, Second Edition:
# A Tutorial with R, JAGS, and Stan. Academic Press / Elsevier.

# Optional generic preliminaries:
graphics.off() # This closes all of R's graphics windows.
rm(list=ls())  # Careful! This clears all of R's memory!

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Load the data:
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------

# For real research, you would read in your data file here. This script expects
# the data to have two columns for the paired scores, one row per pair. No
# missing data.
#
# myData = read.csv("YourDataFileName.csv")
# y = myData[,c("ColumnNameOfPreScore","ColumnNameOfPostScore")]

# Generate simulated data:
library(MASS)
mu1 = 100.0
sigma1 = 15.0
mu2 = 108.0
sigma2 = 20.0
rho = 0.9
Sigma <- matrix(c( sigma1^2 , rho*sigma1*sigma2 ,
                   rho*sigma2*sigma1 , sigma2^2 ) , ncol=2 , byrow=TRUE )
set.seed(47405)
N = 100
yMat = mvrnorm(n=N, mu=c(mu1,mu2), Sigma=Sigma, empirical=TRUE)
colnames(yMat) = c("Y1","Y2")
write.csv( data.frame(yMat) , file="Jags-DifferenceOfPairedScores-Data.csv" )
 

# Now read in simulated data as if it were a data file:
myData = read.csv("Jags-DifferenceOfPairedScores-Data.csv")
y = myData[,c("Y1","Y2")]

#----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# The rest can remain unchanged, except for the specification of difference of
# means at the very end.
#
# The script below is a modification of the script Jags-MultivariateNormal.R,
# and there are some vestigial and unnecessary complexities. The previous script
# involved data with possibly more than two "y" columns, whereas the present
# script is only concerned with two "y" columns.
#----------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Load some functions used below:
source("DBDA2E-utilities.R") # Must be in R's current working directory.
# Install the ellipse package if not already:
want = c("ellipse")
have = want %in% rownames(installed.packages())
if ( any(!have) ) { install.packages( want[!have] ) }

# Standardize the data:
sdOrig = apply(y,2,sd)
meanOrig = apply(y,2,mean)
zy = apply(y,2,function(yVec){(yVec-mean(yVec))/sd(yVec)})
# Assemble data for sending to JAGS:
dataList = list(
  zy = zy ,
  Ntotal =  nrow(zy) ,
  Nvar = ncol(zy) ,
  # Include original data info for transforming to original scale:
  sdOrig = sdOrig ,
  meanOrig = meanOrig ,
  # For wishart (dwish) prior on inverse covariance matrix:
  zRscal = ncol(zy) ,  # for dwish prior
  zRmat = diag(x=1,nrow=ncol(zy))  # Rmat = diag(apply(y,2,var))
)

# Define the model:
modelString = "
model {
  for ( i in 1:Ntotal ) {
    zy[i,1:Nvar] ~ dmnorm( zMu[1:Nvar] , zInvCovMat[1:Nvar,1:Nvar] )
  }
  for ( varIdx in 1:Nvar ) { zMu[varIdx] ~ dnorm( 0 , 1/2^2 ) }
  zInvCovMat ~ dwish( zRmat[1:Nvar,1:Nvar] , zRscal )
  # Convert invCovMat to sd and correlation:
  zCovMat <- inverse( zInvCovMat )
  for ( varIdx in 1:Nvar ) { zSigma[varIdx] <- sqrt(zCovMat[varIdx,varIdx]) }
  for ( varIdx1 in 1:Nvar ) { for ( varIdx2 in 1:Nvar ) {
    zRho[varIdx1,varIdx2] <- ( zCovMat[varIdx1,varIdx2]
                               / (zSigma[varIdx1]*zSigma[varIdx2]) )
  } }
  # Convert to original scale:
  for ( varIdx in 1:Nvar ) {
    sigma[varIdx] <- zSigma[varIdx] * sdOrig[varIdx]
    mu[varIdx] <- zMu[varIdx] * sdOrig[varIdx] + meanOrig[varIdx]
  }
  for ( varIdx1 in 1:Nvar ) { for ( varIdx2 in 1:Nvar ) {
    rho[varIdx1,varIdx2] <- zRho[varIdx1,varIdx2]
  } }
}
" # close quote for modelString
writeLines( modelString , con="Jags-MultivariateNormal-model.txt" )

# Run the chains:
nChain = 3
nAdapt = 500
nBurnIn = 500
nThin = 10
nStepToSave = 20000
require(rjags)
jagsModel = jags.model( file="Jags-MultivariateNormal-model.txt" ,
                        data=dataList , n.chains=nChain , n.adapt=nAdapt )
update( jagsModel , n.iter=nBurnIn )
codaSamples = coda.samples( jagsModel ,
                            variable.names=c("mu","sigma","rho") ,
                            n.iter=nStepToSave/nChain*nThin , thin=nThin )

# Convergence diagnostics:
parameterNames = varnames(codaSamples) # get all parameter names
for ( parName in parameterNames ) {
  diagMCMC( codaObject=codaSamples , parName=parName )
}

# Examine the posterior distribution:
mcmcMat = as.matrix(codaSamples)
chainLength = nrow(mcmcMat)
Nvar = ncol(y)
# Create subsequence of steps through chain for plotting:
stepVec = floor(seq(1,chainLength,length=20))

# Make plots of posterior distribution:

# Preparation -- define useful functions:
library(ellipse)
expandRange = function( x , exMult=0.2 ) {
  lowVal = min(x)
  highVal = max(x)
  wid = max(x)-min(x)
  return( c( lowVal - exMult*wid , highVal + exMult*wid ) )
}

for ( varIdx in 1:Nvar ) {
  openGraph(width=7,height=3.5)
  par( mar=c(3.5,3,2,1) , mgp=c(2.0,0.7,0) )
  layout(matrix(1:2,nrow=1))
  # Marginal posterior on means:
  plotPost( mcmcMat[ , paste0("mu[",varIdx,"]") ] ,
            xlab=paste0("mu[",varIdx,"]") ,
            main=paste( "Mean of" , colnames(y)[varIdx] ) )
  # Marginal posterior on standard deviations:
  plotPost( mcmcMat[ , paste0("sigma[",varIdx,"]") ] ,
            xlab=paste0("sigma[",varIdx,"]") ,
            main=paste( "SD of" , colnames(y)[varIdx] ) )
}

for ( varIdx1 in 1:(Nvar-1) ) {
  for ( varIdx2 in (varIdx1+1):Nvar ) {
    openGraph(width=7,height=3.5)
    par( mar=c(3.5,3,2,1) , mgp=c(2.0,0.7,0) )
    layout(matrix(1:2,nrow=1))
    # Marginal posterior on correlation coefficient
    plotPost( mcmcMat[ , paste0("rho[",varIdx1,",",varIdx2,"]") ] ,
              xlab=paste0("rho[",varIdx1,",",varIdx2,"]") ,
              main=paste( "Corr. of" , colnames(y)[varIdx1] ,
                          "and" , colnames(y)[varIdx2] ) )
    # Data with posterior ellipse
    ellipseLevel = 0.90
    plot( y[,c(varIdx1,varIdx2)] , asp=1 , # pch=19 ,
          xlim=expandRange(y[,varIdx1],0.1) ,
          ylim=expandRange(y[,varIdx2],0.1) ,
          xlab=colnames(y)[varIdx1] , ylab=colnames(y)[varIdx2] ,
          main=bquote("Data with posterior "*.(ellipseLevel)*" level contour") )
    abline(0,1,lty="dashed")
    # Posterior ellipses:
    for ( stepIdx in stepVec ) {
      points( ellipse( mcmcMat[ stepIdx ,
                                paste0("rho[",varIdx1,",",varIdx2,"]") ] ,
                       scale=mcmcMat[ stepIdx ,
                                      c( paste0("sigma[",varIdx1,"]") ,
                                         paste0("sigma[",varIdx2,"]") ) ] ,
                       centre=mcmcMat[ stepIdx ,
                                       c( paste0("mu[",varIdx1,"]") ,
                                          paste0("mu[",varIdx2,"]") ) ] ,
                       level=ellipseLevel ) ,
              type="l" , col="skyblue" , lwd=1 )
    }
    # replot data:
    points( y[,c(varIdx1,varIdx2)] )
    points( mean(y[,varIdx1]) , mean(y[,varIdx2]) , pch="+" , col="red" , cex=2 )
  }
}

# Show data descriptives on console:
cor( y )
apply(y,2,mean)
apply(y,2,sd)

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Difference of means. N.B.: THIS ONLY MAKES SENSE IF THE MEANS ARE ON THE SAME
# SCALE, E.G., BEFORE-TREATMENT AND AFTER-TREATMENT SCORES ON THE SAME MEASURE.
# Change the specification of indices as appropriate to your variable names and
# interests.
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Specify indices of desired means:
MuIdx1 = which(colnames(y)=="Y2")
MuIdx2 = which(colnames(y)=="Y1")
# Make plot of posterior difference:
openGraph(height=3.5,width=4)
par( mar=c(3.5,1,2,1) , mgp=c(2.0,0.7,0) )
plotPost( mcmcMat[ , paste0("mu[",MuIdx1,"]") ]
          - mcmcMat[ , paste0("mu[",MuIdx2,"]") ],
          xlab=paste0( "mu[",MuIdx1,"] - mu[",MuIdx2,"]" ) ,
          main=bquote( mu[ .(colnames(y)[MuIdx1]) ]
                       - mu[ .(colnames(y)[MuIdx2]) ] ) ,
          cex.main=1.5 , ROPE=c(-1.5,1.5) )
points( mean(y[,MuIdx1])-mean(y[,MuIdx2]) , 0 , pch="+" , col="red" , cex=2 )

#---------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Re-do using BEST package:
library(BEST)
BESTout = BESTmcmc( y[,MuIdx1] - y[,MuIdx2] ,
                    numSavedSteps=nStepToSave , thinSteps=nThin )
openGraph(height=3.5,width=4)
par( mar=c(3.5,1,2,1) , mgp=c(2.0,0.7,0) )
plot( BESTout , compVal=0.0 , ROPE=c(-1.5,1.5) ,
      xlab=paste0( "mu[",MuIdx1,"] - mu[",MuIdx2,"]" ) ,
      main=bquote( mu[ .(colnames(y)[MuIdx1]) ]
                   - mu[ .(colnames(y)[MuIdx2]) ] ) )

#---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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