# Maximum Likelihood For A Simple Linear Mixed Model

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Something I’ve been trying to understand better over the pandemic has been the algorithms and mathematics that underpin commonly used statistical models. I’ve been reading a lot of great books. At the moment, I’m reading Wood’s book on Generalized Additive Models. He has a great chapter on mixed models. I see these models used a lot, but in many contexts there isn’t much discussion of what’s going on under the hood of whatever software package computed the model. So in this post, I’ll describe the logic of fitting these models with maximum likelihood estimation and write a function that does so in Python.

The function I’ve written here isn’t meant to be a replacement for the complicated computing and estimation that underpins more specialized software for fitting these models. Instead, I hope it makes it clear how the mathematics translates into implementation. I’ll avoid efficient, but sometimes hard to read, numerical computing tools like certain matrix decompositions in favor of readable code.

# Linear Mixed Models

A simple mixed model has the form

$Y = X\beta + Zb + \epsilon$

Where b is a vector of random effects, Z is a model matrix for the random effects, $\beta$ and X are the fixed effect coefficients and the appropriate design matrix (the same as a linear regression model), and $\epsilon$ is an error term

$b \sim N(0, \psi_\theta)$ $\epsilon \sim N(0, \Lambda_\theta)$

Thus

$y \sim N(X\beta, Z \psi_{\theta} Z^\intercal + \Lambda_\theta)$

I write $\psi_\theta$ and $\Lambda_\theta$ because the target for our optimization procedure will be a set of parameters $\theta$ that these covariance matrices depend on.

### Maximum Likelihood Estimation for the model

We want to calculate estimates for $\beta$ and $\theta$.

Using $f()$ to denote density functions, a convenient expression for the model likelihood can be found as follows.

1. Keep in mind that $f(y,b\vert\beta) = f(y\vert b,\beta)f(b)$
2. $f(y\vert\beta) = \int f(y,b\vert\beta)\, \mathrm{d}b$
3. Maximize $l(\beta,\theta) = \log f(y\vert\beta)$ to estimate $b$ and $\beta$

If we note that $y\vert b,\beta \sim N(X\beta+Zb, \Lambda_\theta)$ and $b \sim N(0, \psi_\theta)$, then:

$f(y\vert \beta) = \int\!f(y, b\vert \beta)\, \mathrm{d}b = \int\!\exp[\log\!f(y, b\vert \beta)]\, \mathrm{d}b$

The final expression can be expressed as a Taylor expansion about $\hat{b}$ - the maximizer of the log likelihood. We only need terms up to the second derivative, because the higher order derivatives of a log Gaussian are 0. The linear term in the expansion is 0 because $\hat{b}$ is a maximum.

$\int\!\exp[\,\log\!f(y, b\vert \beta)\,]\, \mathrm{d}b = \int\!\exp[\,\log\!f(y, b\vert \beta) + 0 + (b-\hat{b})^{\intercal}\frac{1}{2} \frac{\partial^2\log\!f(y, b\vert \beta)}{\partial b \partial b^\intercal} (b-\hat{b})\,] \mathrm{d}b \\= f(y, b\vert \beta)\int\!\exp[\,(b-\hat{b})^{\intercal}\frac{1}{2} \frac{\partial^2\log\!f(y, b\vert \beta)}{\partial b \partial b^\intercal} (b-\hat{b})\,] \mathrm{d}b \\ = f(y, b\vert \beta)\int\!\exp[\,-\frac{1}{2}(b-\hat{b})^{\intercal}(Z^{\intercal}\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z\,+\,\psi^{-1}_{\theta})(b-\hat{b})\,] \mathrm{d}b$

Now the integrand in the final expression is the exponential portion of a Gaussian with a mean of $\hat{b}$ and a covariance matrix $(Z^\intercal\Lambda_{\theta}^{-1}Z + \psi_{\theta}^{-1})^{-1}$. Because a probability distribution integrates to 1, this portion of the Gaussian integrates to the inverse of the normalization constant.

$\int\!\exp[\,-\frac{1}{2}(b-\hat{b})^{\intercal}(Z^{\intercal}\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z\,+\,\psi^{-1}_{\theta})(b-\hat{b})\,] \mathrm{d}b\\ = \frac{(2\pi)^{\frac{p}{2}}}{\vert (Z^{\intercal}\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z\,+\,\psi^{-1}_{\theta})\vert ^{\frac{1}{2}}}$

So

$f(y\vert \beta)\,=\,f(y, b\vert \beta)\int\!\exp[\,-\frac{1}{2}(b-\hat{b})^{\intercal}(Z^{\intercal}\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z\,+\,\psi^{-1}_{\theta})(b-\hat{b})\,] \mathrm{d}b \\ = f(y, b\vert \beta)\,\frac{(2\pi)^{\frac{p}{2}}}{\vert (Z^{\intercal}\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z\,+\,\psi^{-1}_{\theta})\vert ^{\frac{1}{2}}}$

There’s some cancelling of elements from equation 7 when it’s multiplied with $f(y, b\vert \beta)$. So twice our log likelihood from $f(y\vert \beta)$ is:

$2\,l(\beta, \theta) = -(y - X\beta - Z\hat{b})^\intercal\,\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}(y - X\beta - Z\hat{b}) - \hat{b}^{\intercal}\psi^{-1}_{\theta}\hat{b} \\ -\log \vert \Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}\vert -\log\vert\psi^{-1}_{\theta}\vert - \log\vert Z^{\intercal}\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z + \psi^{-1}_{\theta}\vert - n\log(2\pi)$

Calculating the derivatives and solving for $\beta$ and $b$ reveals something that, at first, looks unsolveable, but in reality is just laborious. The MLEs for these parameters rely on each other.

A MLE for $b$ is

$\hat{b} = \left(Z^{\intercal}\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z + \psi^{-1}_{\theta}\right)^{-1} Z^{\intercal}\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}(y - X\hat{\beta})$

The MLE for $\beta$ is

$\hat{\beta} = \left( X^\intercal \Lambda^{-1}_{\theta} X\right)^{-1} \Lambda^{-1}_{\theta} X^\intercal \left(y - Zb\right)$

One solution for $\hat{\beta}$ is (from Henderson, 1950):

$\hat{\beta} = \left( X^\intercal \left\{\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta} - \Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z \left[ Z^{\intercal} \Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z + \psi^{-1}_{\theta}\right]^{-1} Z^{\intercal} \Lambda^{-1}_{\theta} \right\} X\right)^{-1} X^\intercal \left\{\Lambda^{-1}_{\theta} - \Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z \left[ Z^{\intercal} \Lambda^{-1}_{\theta}Z + \psi^{-1}_{\theta}\right]^{-1} Z^{\intercal} \Lambda^{-1}_{\theta} \right\}y$

So we now have a likelihood function that depends on $\beta$ and a way of estimating $b$ from $\beta$. All of this depends on an estimate of $\theta$, a vector of parameters that we use to compute the covariance matrices $\Lambda_\theta$ and $\psi_\theta$. Great! Let’s try to implement this in NumPy.

## Doing the computations

I’ll compute these estimators by maximum likelihood.

Here’s a function that computes the negative log likelihood for our model. The first argument to the function, theta, is a vector containing guesses for the residual and random effects variances, which we search for using scipy.optimize.minimize.

Note the very simple covariance structure. There’s no correlation between random effects here. More complex models have a more elaborate covariance matrix structure, which is beyond the scope of this post. I hope to write a post on that eventually.

If we’re optimizing, optimizing = True and we return only the negative log likelihood $-l(\beta, \theta)$ for the minimizer. Otherwise, optimizing = False and we return our log likelihood, our parameter estimates, some sampling statistics for $\hat{\beta}$ and a z-test for that estimate.

import numpy as np
from scipy.stats import norm

def logLike(theta,X,Z,y, optimizing = True):

sigmaRE = np.exp(theta[0]) #Ensure these are positive by inputing log values
sigmaError = np.exp(theta[1])

n = len(y)

pr = Z.shape[1] #Dimensions of the random effects
pf = X.shape[1] #Dimensions of the fixed effects

inverse_lambda = np.eye(n) * 1/sigmaError #Very simple covariance matrices
inverse_psi = np.eye(pr) * 1/sigmaRE

yCovariance = Z.T @inverse_lambda @Z + inverse_psi

#Equation 12: Compute \hat{\beta}

#This term appears twice in the mixed model equation for beta_hat, compute it once
C = (inverse_lambda - inverse_lambda @Z @ np.linalg.inv(yCovariance) @Z.T @inverse_lambda)

firstTerm = np.linalg.inv(X.T @ C @X)

secondTerm = X.T @ C @y

beta_hat = firstTerm @ secondTerm #Solution to the mixed model equation

#Equation 10: \hat{\b}
b_hat = np.linalg.inv(yCovariance)@ Z.T @inverse_lambda @ (y - X @ beta_hat)

#likelihood components
logCovarDet = np.log(np.linalg.det( yCovariance ))

sqrdMahalanobis  = (y - X @ beta_hat - Z @ b_hat).T @inverse_lambda @(y - X@beta_hat - Z @b_hat)

lambda_ = np.eye(n) * sigmaError

psi = np.eye(pr) * sigmaRE

#Equation 9: log likelihood
logLik = .5 *(- sqrdMahalanobis - \
(b_hat.T @inverse_psi @b_hat) - \
np.log(np.linalg.det(lambda_)) - \
np.log(np.linalg.det(psi)) - \
logCovarDet - \
n*np.log(2*np.pi))

if optimizing:
return -logLik
else:

beta_hat_SD = np.sqrt(np.linalg.inv(X.T @ np.linalg.inv(Z@psi@Z.T + lambda_)@X))
p_value = 2*(1- norm.cdf(beta_hat,loc = 0, scale =  beta_hat_SD))
z = beta_hat/beta_hat_SD

return {'Log Likelihood': logLik, 'Parameters': np.array(np.r_[beta_hat, b_hat]), 'Beta_SD':beta_hat_SD, 'z':z, 'p-value': p_value}


Where does that p-value come from? Remember that $y \sim N(X\beta, Z \psi_{\theta} Z^\intercal + \Lambda_\theta)$. If we calculate the the MLE for $\beta$ from this, we have.

$\hat{\beta} = \left\{X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} X \right\}^{-1} X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1}y$ $\mathbb{E} \left[ \hat{\beta} \right] = \left\{X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} X \right\}^{-1} X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} \mathbb{E} \left[y \right] \\ = \left\{X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} X \right\}^{-1} X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} X\beta \\ = \beta$ $\mathbb{Var} \left[ \hat{\beta} \right] = \left\{X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} X \right\}^{-1} X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} X \left\{X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1}X\right\}^{-1}\\ = \left\{X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} X \right\}^{-1} \left[X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1} X\right] \left\{X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1}X\right\}^{-1}\\ = \left\{X^\intercal \left( Z\psi Z^\intercal + \Lambda \right) ^{-1}X\right\}^{-1}$

Because $\hat{\beta}$ is a linear transform of y, which has a Gaussian distribution, it also has a Gaussian distribution.

Great. Now for some simple data. An engineer wants to measure the time it takes certain ultrasonic waves to travel along a rail as a measure of longitudinal stress. There are three observations of the time taken for the wave for each of six rails. We’re going to fit this with a model in which the intercept can vary between rails. This will give us a estimate of the variability between rails and the average time for each rail.

The first column is the rail labels, the second is the travel time for the wave.

railData = np.genfromtxt('Rail.csv', delimiter =  ',', skip_header= 1, usecols = (1,2))

railData

array([[  1.,  55.],
[  1.,  53.],
[  1.,  54.],
[  2.,  26.],
[  2.,  37.],
[  2.,  32.],
[  3.,  78.],
[  3.,  91.],
[  3.,  85.],
[  4.,  92.],
[  4., 100.],
[  4.,  96.],
[  5.,  49.],
[  5.,  51.],
[  5.,  50.],
[  6.,  80.],
[  6.,  85.],
[  6.,  83.]])


Here’s the random effects matrix $Z$. All we care about for this model is separate intercepts for each rail.

Z = np.zeros((railData.shape[0],6)) #Random effects matrix
for col in range(6):
Z[col*3:col*3+3, col] = [1,1,1]
Z

array([[1., 0., 0., 0., 0., 0.],
[1., 0., 0., 0., 0., 0.],
[1., 0., 0., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 1., 0., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 1., 0., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 1., 0., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 1., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 1., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 1., 0., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., 1., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., 1., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., 1., 0., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., 0., 1., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., 0., 1., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., 0., 1., 0.],
[0., 0., 0., 0., 0., 1.],
[0., 0., 0., 0., 0., 1.],
[0., 0., 0., 0., 0., 1.]])


The fixed effect $X$ only contains an intercept.

X = np.ones((railData.shape[0],1)) #Fixed effects


$y$ is the travel time for the waves.

y = railData[:,1]
y

array([ 55.,  53.,  54.,  26.,  37.,  32.,  78.,  91.,  85.,  92., 100.,
96.,  49.,  51.,  50.,  80.,  85.,  83.])


Here we minimize the negative log likelihood.

from scipy.optimize import minimize
out = minimize(logLike, [0,0], (X, Z, y))


I’ve written the function so that if we plug in our variance estimates and tell the function we’re not optimizing, it will return our random effects, fixed intercept and a p-value for the fixed effect.

results = logLike(out.x, X, Z, y, optimizing = False)
results

{'Log Likelihood': -64.2800184692185,
'Parameters': array([ 66.5       , -12.3697708 , -34.47042796,  17.97740023,
29.19265909, -16.32809746,  15.9982369 ]),
'Beta_SD': array([[9.28484835]]),
'z': array([[7.16220637]]),
'p-value': array([[7.93809463e-13]])}


Let’s compare it to the output of the statsmodels mixed model function.

import statsmodels.api as sm

import statsmodels.formula.api as smf

import pandas as pd

data = pd.DataFrame(railData, columns = ('Rail', 'Travel'))

statsModelLMM = smf.mixedlm("Travel ~ 1", data, groups = data['Rail']).fit(method = 'BFGS', reml = False)

statsModelLMM.summary()

 Model: MixedLM Dependent Variable: Travel No. Observations: 18 Method: ML No. Groups: 6 Scale: 16.1668 Min. group size: 3 Log-Likelihood: -64.2800 Max. group size: 3 Converged: Yes Mean group size: 3.0
Coef. Std.Err. z P>|z| [0.025 0.975] 66.500 9.285 7.162 0.000 48.302 84.698 511.851 90.961

These are the same models! Our estimates of the variance of the random effects and the residual variance are

np.round(np.exp(out.x),2)

array([511.86,  16.17])


The estimates from the statsmodel model are

np.round([statsModelLMM.cov_re['Group'][0], statsModelLMM.scale],2)

array([511.85,  16.17])


Our fixed intercept and the statsmodel fixed intercept

np.round([results['Parameters'][0], statsModelLMM.fe_params['Intercept']],2)

array([66.5, 66.5])


Do our random intercepts and the statsmodel random intercepts agree?

np.allclose(
np.array([value[1] for value in statsModelLMM.random_effects.items()]).flatten(),
results['Parameters'][1:]
)

True


What are our random intercept estimates?

results['Parameters'][1:]

array([-12.3697708 , -34.47042796,  17.97740023,  29.19265909,
-16.32809746,  15.9982369 ])


So there is a fair bit of variability between the rails, not much in the way of residual variance, and we now have estimates of the mean time for each rail.

That’s it for this post! Feel free to email me or contact me on Twitter if you have any questions or find any mistakes (surely not). I have more posts planned on statistics, modeling and data mining.

I’m looking for analytics work in the bay area at the moment. You can find my CV in the header of this website.