Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2003 / iii / Paper 38 / 3

For independent Bernoulli random variables, the log-likelihood isEvery likelihood factor is at most one, so $\ell \le 0$. In the statistical saturated model, choose ${\hat{\pi }}_i=y_i$ independently for each observation. The probability of each realised response is then exactly one. With the continuous convention $0\log 0=0$, the Bernoulli saturated log-likelihood is thereforeThe inclusion of probabilities zero and one is important: if the parameter space required $0<{\pi }_i<1$, zero would be the supremum approached at the boundary, rather than an attained maximum.

The first fit is a Bernoulli logistic-regression model for the probability of a positive response. Its fitted linear predictor isand its fitted probability is $\hat{\pi }=(1+e^{-\hat{\eta }}{)}^{-1}$. There are eight coefficients. The null degrees of freedom identify $n=200$, and the residual degrees of freedom are $200-8=192$.

Each slope is a change in the log odds per unit of its covariate, holding the others fixed. Exponentiating gives conditional odds ratios; for example a ten-unit glucose increase multiplies fitted odds by $e^{10(0.032115958)}=1.379$, and a ten-year age increase by $e^{10(0.041182353)}=1.510$. These are changes in odds, not multiplicative changes in probability, and the observational associations are not automatically causal effects. The intercept corresponds to all numerical covariates being zero, generally an extrapolation beyond meaningful subjects.

The standard errors come from the inverse Fisher information matrix of the logistic regression. With binomial dispersion parameter fixed at one, the displayed t ratios are asymptotic normal Wald statistics. In the full fit, glucose and the pedigree measure have clear individual evidence of nonzero slopes, with two-sided $p\simeq 2.09\times 10^{-6}$ and $0.00609$. The body-mass and age terms are borderline, with $p\simeq 0.0504$ and $0.0618$; pregnancy count is weaker, $p\simeq 0.110$. Blood pressure and skinfold have little individual evidence after adjustment. These labels should not be converted into a claim that the weaker predictors have no effect, or used as automatic model-selection rules.

A deviance residual here isIts square is the observation's contribution to binomial deviance, so the squared residuals sum to the printed residual deviance. The five-number summaries describe the distribution of these signed residuals. The null deviance $256.4142$ belongs to an intercept-only logistic regression; the full fitted deviance is $178.3907$. Four Fisher scoring iterations record convergence of the numerical likelihood fit.

The second model uses only glucose:Its two coefficients leave $198$ residual degrees of freedom. A ten-unit glucose increase multiplies its fitted odds by $e^{0.3778371}\simeq 1.459$. This differs from the adjusted multiplier $1.379$, because the models condition on different covariates; both adjustment and noncollapsibility of the odds ratio can change logistic coefficients. The glucose-only model has deviance $207.3727$, so its maximized log-likelihood is lower than the full model's.

For these fixed-dimensional nested models, analysis of deviance and Wilks theorem giveThus the additional six predictors collectively improve the glucose-only model, even though several individual Wald tests are not significant. These comparisons assume independent subjects, an appropriate logistic mean structure, full rank, and regular finite parameter estimates without separation.

It would be incorrect to infer that absolute fit is good merely because $178.39<192$. Individual Bernoulli deviance need not have a chi-squared calibration: there is just one binary observation per saturated probability, and the saturated dimension increases with sample size. A simple counterexample is an intercept-only model with true probability $1/2$, for which $D/n\to 2\log 2$, not one. For absolute adequacy, inspect residual patterns and predicted-risk calibration, use meaningful grouped comparisons when appropriate, or calibrate a chosen fit statistic by parametric bootstrap. The regular nested-model tests above are not subject to that saturated-model dimensionality problem. Only the displayed summaries and a few example rows are supplied, so patient-level diagnostics or complete numerical refitting cannot be reconstructed from this page alone.