4 ms·
Your point on (2) and bias may be correct, but I disagree about interpretation. If there's a one-way causal link between A and B (e.g. B causes A, but A does n
by agentofoblivion 8y ago
Your point on (2) and bias may be correct, but I disagree about interpretation. If there's a one-way causal link between A and B (e.g. B causes A, but A does not cause B), then should you interpret the presence of B as having an impact that sums the coefficients, or ignore the correlation and pretend the impact came from A?
Or what if A always caused B, but the impact was slightly less than if B occurred without A? In that case, the sign on A might be negative, but its presence would actually tend to increase the probability of class=1, it's just that the positive impact has already been counted by variable B.
Maybe you try to avoid this situation by adding in an explicit interaction term of A*B, but then how do you interpret the impact of A since you now have more than one coefficient?
If you feel confident making assertive statements about what has been learned by looking at an equation fit on multi-correlated data, then your mathematical intuition is much stronger than mine!
- stdbrouw 8y agoThe interpretation of interaction terms (and first-order terms in the presence of interactions) is something that is taught to bachelor students in the social sciences all the time. I'm not going to say it's entirely straightforward and I'm sure lots of people get it wrong, but it's not rocket science. If people jump in and use a technique without having a clue about how it's supposed to be used (and I'm sure there are plenty -- I agree with you on that), then that's ultimately their own stupid fault.