Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2014 / iii / Paper 33 / 5 / b / i

For woman $i$, write $m_i$ for the number of births, $Y_i$ for the number with defects, $a_i$ for baseline age, and $e_i$ for exposure. Let $p_i$ be the common marginal defect probability for her births. The first fit is a grouped grouped-binomial logistic regression:It assumes independent women and, conditionally on their covariates, independent births with the same probability within each woman. The supplied birth totals are the binomial denominators; fitting the proportions with weights $m_i$ is equivalent to this grouped-binomial specification. The fitted linear predictor is $-1.74272+0.02030a_i+2.33028e_i$.

The second fit is a generalized additive model with the same logit link function and the mean specificationThe functions $f_a,f_e$ are penalized cubic regression splines with natural boundary conditions. Centering constraints such as ${\sum }_i{f}_a(a_i)={\sum }_i{f}_e(e_i)=0$ separate them from the intercept; the fitted centered intercept is $-0.2031$. Their second derivative roughness penalties control complexity.

The call estimates a common scale rather than fixing it at one. Its working variance specification for the counts isEquivalently the variance of $Y_i/m_i$ is $\varphi p_i(1-p_i)/m_i$. This is the working moment interpretation of an overdispersed binomial generalized additive model: the code uses binomial deviance for fitting and estimated scale for inference. With $\varphi \ne 1$, it is not an exact independent-binomial sampling model. Women are still treated as independent groups, but within-woman dependence or unobserved heterogeneity can motivate the extra dispersion. The quasibinomial regression interpretation states what the scaled analysis assumes without inventing a full probability distribution for its counts.