- $\hat\beta_0$: the mean of white males
- $\hat\beta_{\rm Female}$: the difference between the mean of females and the mean of white males
- $\hat\beta_{\rm Black}$: the difference between the mean of black malesblacks and the mean of white maleswhites
Update: To clarify my points, let's consider a canned example, coded in R
.
d = data.frame(Sex =factor(rep(c("Male","Female"),times=2), levels=c("Male","Female")),
Race =factor(rep(c("White","Black"),each=2), levels=c("White","Black")),
y =c(1, 3, 5, 7))
d
# Sex Race y
# 1 Male White 1
# 2 Female White 3
# 3 Male Black 5
# 4 Female Black 7
d = data.frame(Sex =factor(rep(c("Male","Female"),times=2), levels=c("Male","Female")),
Race =factor(rep(c("White","Black"),each=2), levels=c("White","Black")),
y =c(1, 3, 5, 7))
d
# Sex Race y
# 1 Male White 1
# 2 Female White 3
# 3 Male Black 5
# 4 Female Black 7
aggregate(y~Sex, d, mean)
# Sex y
# 1 Male 3
# 2 Female 5
aggregate(y~Race, d, mean)
# Race y
# 1 White 2
# 2 Black 6
aggregate(y~Sex, d, mean)
# Sex y
# 1 Male 3
# 2 Female 5
## i.e., the difference is 2
aggregate(y~Race, d, mean)
# Race y
# 1 White 2
# 2 Black 6
## i.e., the difference is 4
We can compare the differences between these means to the coefficients from a fitted model:
summary(lm(y~Sex+Race, d))
# ...
# Coefficients:
# Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
# (Intercept) 1 3.85e-16 2.60e+15 2.4e-16 ***
# SexFemale 2 4.44e-16 4.50e+15 < 2e-16 ***
# RaceBlack 4 4.44e-16 9.01e+15 < 2e-16 ***
# ...
# Warning message:
# In summary.lm(lm(y ~ Sex + Race, d)) :
# essentially perfect fit: summary may be unreliable
summary(lm(y~Sex+Race, d))
# ...
# Coefficients:
# Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
# (Intercept) 1 3.85e-16 2.60e+15 2.4e-16 ***
# SexFemale 2 4.44e-16 4.50e+15 < 2e-16 ***
# RaceBlack 4 4.44e-16 9.01e+15 < 2e-16 ***
# ...
# Warning message:
# In summary.lm(lm(y ~ Sex + Race, d)) :
# essentially perfect fit: summary may be unreliable
The thing to recognize about this situation is that, without an interaction term, we are assuming parallel lines. Thus, the Estimate
for the (Intercept)
is the mean of white males. The Estimate
for SexFemale
is the difference between the mean of females and the mean of males. The Estimate
for RaceBlack
is the difference between the mean of blacks and the mean of whites. Again, because a model without an interaction term assumes that the effects are strictly additive (the lines are strictly parallel), the mean of black females is then the mean of white males plus the difference between the mean of females and the mean of males plus the difference between the mean of blacks and the mean of whites.