Mixed-Effects Regression Trees for Clustered Data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper presents an extension of the standard regression tree method to clustered data. Previous works extending tree methods to accommodate correlated data are mainly based on the multivariate repeated-measures approach. We propose a "mixed effects regression tree" method where the correlated observations are viewed as nested within clusters rather than as vectors of multivariate repeated responses. The proposed method can handle unbalanced clusters, allows observations within clusters to be split, and can incorporate random effects and observation-level covariates. We implemented the proposed method using a standard tree algorithm within the framework of the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed regression tree method provides substantial improvements over standard trees when the random effects are non negligible. A real data example is used to illustrate the method.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.021 | 0.073 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.005 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".