R: glm function with family = “binomial” and “weight” specification

Question

I am very confused with how weight works in glm with family="binomial". In my understanding, the likelihood of the glm with family = "binomial" is specified as follows: $$ f(y) = {n\choose{ny}} p^{ny} (1-p)^{n(1-y)} = \exp \left(n \left[ y \log \frac{p}{1-p} - \left(-\log (1-p)\right) \right] + \log {n \choose ny}\right) $$ where $y$ is the "proportion of observed success" and $n$ is the known number of trials.

In my understanding, the probability of success $p$ is parametrized with some linear coefficients $\beta$ as $p=p(\beta)$ and glm function with family = "binomial" search for: $$ \textrm{arg}\max_{\beta} \sum_i \log f(y_i). $$ Then this optimization problem can be simplified as:

$$ \textrm{arg}\max_{\beta} \sum_i \log f(y_i)= \textrm{arg}\max_{\beta} \sum_i n_i \left[ y_i \log \frac{p(\beta)}{1-p(\beta)} - \left(-\log (1-p(\beta))\right) \right] + \log {n_i \choose n_iy_i}\\ = \textrm{arg}\max_{\beta} \sum_i n_i \left[ y_i \log \frac{p(\beta)}{1-p(\beta)} - \left(-\log (1-p(\beta))\right) \right] \\ $$
Therefore if we let $n_i^*=n_ic$ for all $i=1,...,N$ for some constant $c$, then it must also be true that: $$ \textrm{arg}\max_{\beta} \sum_i \log f(y_i) = \textrm{arg}\max_{\beta} \sum_i n^*_i \left[ y_i \log \frac{p(\beta)}{1-p(\beta)} - \left(-\log (1-p(\beta))\right) \right] \\ $$ From this, I thought that Scaling of the number of trials $n_i$ with a constant does NOT affect the maximum likelihood estimates of $\beta$ given the proportion of success $y_i$.

The help file of glm says:

 "For a binomial GLM prior weights are used to give the number of trials 
  when the response is the proportion of successes" 

Therefore I expected that the scaling of weight would not affect the estimated $\beta$ given the proportion of success as response. However the following two codes return different coefficient values:

 Y <- c(1,0,0,0) ## proportion of observed success
 w <- 1:length(Y) ## weight= the number of trials
 glm(Y~1,weights=w,family=binomial)

This yields:

 Call:  glm(formula = Y ~ 1, family = "binomial", weights = w)

 Coefficients:
 (Intercept)  
      -2.197     

while if I multiply all weights by 1000, the estimated coefficients are different:

 glm(Y~1,weights=w*1000,family=binomial)

 Call:  glm(formula = Y ~ 1, family = binomial, weights = w * 1000)

 Coefficients:
 (Intercept)  
    -3.153e+15  

I saw many other examples like this even with some moderate scaling in weights. What is going on here?

Answer 1

Your example is merely causing rounding error in R. Large weights don't perform well in glm. It's true that scaling w by virtually any smaller number, like 100, leads to same estimates as the unscaled w.

If you want more reliable behavior with the weights arguments, try using the svyglm function from the survey package.

See here:

    > svyglm(Y~1, design=svydesign(ids=~1, weights=~w, data=data.frame(w=w*1000, Y=Y)), family=binomial)
Independent Sampling design (with replacement)
svydesign(ids = ~1, weights = ~w, data = data.frame(w = w * 1000, 
    Y = Y))

Call:  svyglm(formula = Y ~ 1, design = svydesign(ids = ~1, weights = ~w2, 
    data = data.frame(w2 = w * 1000, Y = Y)), family = binomial)

Coefficients:
(Intercept)  
     -2.197  

Degrees of Freedom: 3 Total (i.e. Null);  3 Residual
Null Deviance:      2.601 
Residual Deviance: 2.601    AIC: 2.843

Answer 2

I think it comes down to the initial values that is used in glm.fit from the family$initialize which makes the method divergere. As far as I know, glm.fit solve the problem by forming a QR-decomposition of $\sqrt{W}X$ where $X$ is the design matrix and $\sqrt{W}$ is a diagonal with square roots of the entries as described here. That is, uses a Newton-Raphson method.

The relevant $intialize code is:

if (NCOL(y) == 1) {
    if (is.factor(y)) 
        y <- y != levels(y)[1L]
    n <- rep.int(1, nobs)
    y[weights == 0] <- 0
    if (any(y < 0 | y > 1)) 
        stop("y values must be 0 <= y <= 1")
    mustart <- (weights * y + 0.5)/(weights + 1)
    m <- weights * y
    if (any(abs(m - round(m)) > 0.001)) 
        warning("non-integer #successes in a binomial glm!")
}

Here is a simplified version of glm.fit which shows my point

> #####
> # setup
> y <- matrix(c(1,0,0,0), ncol = 1)
> weights <- 1:nrow(y) * 1000
> nobs <- length(y)
> family <- binomial()
> X <- matrix(rep(1, nobs), ncol = 1) # design matrix used later
> 
> # set mu start as with family$initialize
> if (NCOL(y) == 1) {
+   n <- rep.int(1, nobs)
+   y[weights == 0] <- 0
+   mustart <- (weights * y + 0.5)/(weights + 1)
+   m <- weights * y
+   if (any(abs(m - round(m)) > 0.001)) 
+     warning("non-integer #successes in a binomial glm!")
+ }
> 
> mustart # starting value
             [,1]
[1,] 0.9995004995
[2,] 0.0002498751
[3,] 0.0001666111
[4,] 0.0001249688
> (eta <- family$linkfun(mustart))
          [,1]
[1,]  7.601402
[2,] -8.294300
[3,] -8.699681
[4,] -8.987322
> 
> #####
> # Start loop to fit
> mu <- family$linkinv(eta)
> mu_eta <- family$mu.eta(eta)
> z <- drop(eta + (y - mu) / mu_eta)
> w <- drop(sqrt(weights * mu_eta^2 / family$variance(mu = mu)))
> 
> # code is simpler here as (X^T W X) is a scalar
> X_w <- X * w
> (.coef <- drop(crossprod(X_w)^-1 * ((w * z) %*% X_w)))
[1] -5.098297
> (eta <- .coef * X)
          [,1]
[1,] -5.098297
[2,] -5.098297
[3,] -5.098297
[4,] -5.098297
> 
> # repeat a few times from "start loop to fit"

We can repeat the last part two more times to see that Newton-Raphson method diverges:

> #####
> # Start loop to fit
> mu <- family$linkinv(eta)
> mu_eta <- family$mu.eta(eta)
> z <- drop(eta + (y - mu) / mu_eta)
> w <- drop(sqrt(weights * mu_eta^2 / family$variance(mu = mu)))
> 
> # code is simpler here as (X^T W X) is a scalar
> X_w <- X * w
> (.coef <- drop(crossprod(X_w)^-1 * ((w * z) %*% X_w)))
[1] 10.47049
> (eta <- .coef * X)
         [,1]
[1,] 10.47049
[2,] 10.47049
[3,] 10.47049
[4,] 10.47049
> 
> 
> #####
> # Start loop to fit
> mu <- family$linkinv(eta)
> mu_eta <- family$mu.eta(eta)
> z <- drop(eta + (y - mu) / mu_eta)
> w <- drop(sqrt(weights * mu_eta^2 / family$variance(mu = mu)))
> 
> # code is simpler here as (X^T W X) is a scalar
> X_w <- X * w
> (.coef <- drop(crossprod(X_w)^-1 * ((w * z) %*% X_w)))
[1] -31723.76
> (eta <- .coef * X)
          [,1]
[1,] -31723.76
[2,] -31723.76
[3,] -31723.76
[4,] -31723.76

This does not happen if you start with weights <- 1:nrow(y) or say weights <- 1:nrow(y) * 100.

Notice that you can avoid divergence by setting the mustart argument. E.g. do

> glm(Y ~ 1,weights = w * 1000, family = binomial, mustart = rep(0.5, 4))

Call:  glm(formula = Y ~ 1, family = binomial, weights = w * 1000, mustart = rep(0.5, 
    4))

Coefficients:
(Intercept)  
     -2.197  

Degrees of Freedom: 3 Total (i.e. Null);  3 Residual
Null Deviance:      6502 
Residual Deviance: 6502     AIC: 6504