Multinomial

Hi Tessa,


Answers:

1) how do I define my distribution in a glm when I have multinomial data (5 patches)?

Well, the glm() function cannot handle multinomial data, but function multinom() from the "nnet" library can.
Another package which fits a multinomial probit model is "MNP", there is also the "multinomrob" library. I think multinom() is easiest to use.


2) the same question but for a generalized linear mixed model (I would like to include time as a factor)?

When you need to add a random effect, "MNP" is the only option in R as far as I can see. Things become complicated in that case. Research on multinomial random effects models is still ongoing.
Some references: Multinomial logit random effects models, Statistical Modelling (2001) (J. Hartzel, A. Agresti, and B. Caffo); The analysis of ordered categorical data: An overview and a survey of recent developments, invited discussion paper for the Spanish Statistical Journal, TEST (2005) (I. Liu and A. Agresti).

3) In Crawley they talk about GAM’s (general additive models). What I understand is that for these models you don’t need to define a distribution because they use non parametric smoothers. Can these models be used for multinomial data?

Generalized additive models use non-parametric smoothers to model a non-linear dependence of a response variable on a predictor variable.
The distribution of the response variable is among the list of usual suspects: binomial, poisson, normal, gamma.
It has been claimed that package "gbm" (R) or "MART" (S-Plus) can do this for multinomial data, but I haven't tried those yet.

4) Spatial distributions are difficult. Package "spatstat" could contain the solution. I am not very familiar with analysing spatial patterns.