How to Interpret Statistical Models Using <b>marginaleffects</b> for <i>R</i> and <i>Python</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The parameters of a statistical model can sometimes be difficult to interpret substantively, especially when that model includes nonlinear components, interactions, or transformations. Analysts who fit such complex models often seek to transform raw parameter estimates into quantities that are easier for domain experts and stakeholders to understand. This article presents a simple conceptual framework to describe a vast array of such quantities of interest, which are reported under imprecise and inconsistent terminology across disciplines: predictions, marginal predictions, marginal means, marginal effects, conditional effects, slopes, contrasts, risk ratios, etc. We introduce marginaleffects, a package for R and Python which offers a simple and powerful interface to compute all of those quantities, and to conduct (non-)linear hypothesis and equivalence tests on them. marginaleffects is lightweight; extensible; it works well in combination with other R and Python packages; and it supports over 100 classes of models, including linear, generalized linear, generalized additive, mixed effects, Bayesian, and several machine learning models.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.029 | 0.159 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.041 | 0.025 |
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".