On the 19th of May, City-REDI held a webinar featuring Dr Levi Wolf from the University of Bristol:
Space and Place in Predictive Models
Abstract
Models are representations of reality. Generally, we all want models that are detailed “enough,” but also models that are easy to interpret and estimate. Sometimes, we get lucky: multilevel models provide incredibly powerful specifications that are easy to understand and easier to fit thanks to some of their intrinsic mathematical properties. In geographical applications (when a “level” is a “place”) however, these intrinsic mathematical properties conflict with some well-known effects of spatial dependence. Who wins out, “space” or “place?”
It depends! This talk will provide a high-level, conceptual overview of the tensions between how “spatial” and “platial” (i.e. multilevel) models work. I’ll discuss some of the results from Wolf et al. (2021) about how these tensions get resolved, and what it means for practitioners working with classical multilevel models that involve geographic levels.
View the paper for the seminar.
Summary of the event
- Levi Wolf reflects on the properties of classic multilevel models when incorporating geography in their construction and proposed a more complex model that incorporates space and place dependence.
- Classic multilevel models have only partially considered geography in their construction, only focussing on “place” rather than the dichotomy between “space & place”.
- Because of that, the classic multilevel model may be exaggerated and overconfident. Classic multilevel models may understate the uncertainty of the region-level parameter estimates and overstate their magnitude when spatial dependence exists at either level of the model.
- Intuition from simpler models must be updated for more complex models where ‘nuisance’ dependence in region-level variance components will show up as ‘substantive’ (spatial and platial) dependence.
Upcoming City-REDI Seminars:
| Date | Speaker | Organisation | Seminar title | Book a place |
| 2nd June | Dr Rhiannon Pugh | CIRCLE, Lund University, Sweden | The changing roles of universities during the Covid crisis | Book a place |
| 16th June | Beatriz Jambrina Canseco, PhD | LSE, UK | The stories we tell ourselves: Local newspaper reporting and support for the radical right | Book a place |