Mixed models are hard.
They’re abstract, they’re a little weird, and there is not a common vocabulary or notation for them.
But they’re also extremely important to understand because many data sets require their use.
Repeated measures ANOVA has too many limitations. It just doesn’t cut it any more.
One of the most difficult parts of fitting mixed models is figuring out which random effects to include in a model. And that’s hard to do if you don’t really understand what a random effect is or how it differs from a fixed effect. (more…)