ABSTRACT
Unit 4 is all about hierarchies. Used in the sentence “my workplace is so hierarchical,” this word might have negative connotations. In contrast, “my Bayesian model is so hierarchical” often connotes a good thing! Hierarchical models greatly expand the flexibility of our modeling toolbox by accommodating hierarchical, or grouped data. For example, our data might consist of:
a sampled group of schools and data y on multiple individual students within each school; or
a sampled group of labs and data y from multiple individual experiments within each lab; or
a sampled group of people on whom we make multiple individual observations of information y over time.
