Past exam of the mathematical and Computational Biology course of the University of Cambridge / 2025 / Paper 1 / 4 / b / Solution

Conditional predictions for observed birds and years add their fitted random intercepts to the fixed part of the Gaussian linear mixed model:These are predicted expected values, so they need not be integers. The first is likely more reliable: age three is within the displayed age range, whereas age seven requires extrapolation beyond ages one to six. A quantitative comparison would need the prediction intervals, including uncertainty in both fixed coefficients and random effects; the displayed coefficients alone do not supply them.