Mixed-Effect Models, with or without Spatial Random Effects
Description
Inference based on models with or without spatially-correlated random effects, multivariate responses, or non-Gaussian random effects (e.g., Beta). Variation in residual variance (heteroscedasticity) can itself be represented by a mixed-effect model. Both classical geostatistical models, and Markov random field models on irregular grids (as considered in the 'INLA' package, ), can be fitted, with distinct computational procedures exploiting the sparse matrix representations for the latter case and other autoregressive models. Laplace approximations are used for likelihood or restricted likelihood. Penalized quasi-likelihood and other variants discussed in the h-likelihood literature (Lee and Nelder 2001 ) are also implemented.