Is there any difference between lm and glm for the gaussian family of glm?

Question

Specifically, I want to know if there is a difference between lm(y ~ x1 + x2) and glm(y ~ x1 + x2, family=gaussian). I think that this particular case of glm is equal to lm. Am I wrong?

Answer 1

While for the specific form of model mentioned in the body of the question (i.e. lm(y ~ x1 + x2) vs glm(y ~ x1 + x2, family=gaussian)), regression and GLMs are the same model, the title question asks something slightly more general:

Is there any difference between lm and glm for the gaussian family of glm?

To which the answer is "Yes!".

The reason that they can be different is because you can also specify a link function in the GLM. This allows you to fit particular forms of nonlinear relationship between $y$ (or rather its conditional mean) and the $x$-variables; while you can do this in nls as well, there's no need for starting values, sometimes the convergence is better (also the syntax is a bit easier).

Compare, for example, these models (you have R so I assume you can run these yourself):

x1=c(56.1, 26.8, 23.9, 46.8, 34.8, 42.1, 22.9, 55.5, 56.1, 46.9, 26.7, 33.9, 
37.0, 57.6, 27.2, 25.7, 37.0, 44.4, 44.7, 67.2, 48.7, 20.4, 45.2, 22.4, 23.2, 
39.9, 51.3, 24.1, 56.3, 58.9, 62.2, 37.7, 36.0, 63.9, 62.5, 44.1, 46.9, 45.4, 
23.7, 36.5, 56.1, 69.6, 40.3, 26.2, 67.1, 33.8, 29.9, 25.7, 40.0, 27.5)

x2=c(12.29, 11.42, 13.59, 8.64, 12.77, 9.9, 13.2, 7.34, 10.67, 18.8, 9.84, 16.72, 
10.32, 13.67, 7.65, 9.44, 14.52, 8.24, 14.14, 17.2, 16.21, 6.01, 14.23, 15.63, 
10.83, 13.39, 10.5, 10.01, 13.56, 11.26, 4.8, 9.59, 11.87, 11, 12.02, 10.9, 9.5, 
10.63, 19.03, 16.71, 15.11, 7.22, 12.6, 15.35, 8.77, 9.81, 9.49, 15.82, 10.94, 6.53)

y = c(1.54, 0.81, 1.39, 1.09, 1.3, 1.16, 0.95, 1.29, 1.35, 1.86, 1.1, 0.96,
1.03, 1.8, 0.7, 0.88, 1.24, 0.94, 1.41, 2.13, 1.63, 0.78, 1.55, 1.5, 0.96, 
1.21, 1.4, 0.66, 1.55, 1.37, 1.19, 0.88, 0.97, 1.56, 1.51, 1.09, 1.23, 1.2, 
1.62, 1.52, 1.64, 1.77, 0.97, 1.12, 1.48, 0.83, 1.06, 1.1, 1.21, 0.75)

lm(y ~ x1 + x2)
glm(y ~ x1 + x2, family=gaussian) 
glm(y ~ x1 + x2, family=gaussian(link="log")) 
nls(y ~ exp(b0+b1*x1+b2*x2), start=list(b0=-1,b1=0.01,b2=0.1))

Note that the first pair are the same model ($y_i \sim N(\beta_0+\beta_1 x_{1i}+\beta_2 x_{2i},\sigma^2)\,$), and the second pair are the same model ($y_i \sim N(\exp(\beta_0+\beta_1 x_{1i}+\beta_2 x_{2i}),\sigma^2)\,$ and the fits are essentially the same within each pair.

So - in relation to the title question - you can fit a substantially wider variety of Gaussian models with a GLM than with regression.

Answer 2

From @Repmat's answer, the model summary are the same, but the C.I.'s of the regression coefficients from confint are slightly different between lm and glm.

> confint(reg1, level=0.95)
               2.5 %    97.5 %
(Intercept) 2.474742 11.526174
x1          1.971466  2.014002
x2          2.958422  3.023291
> confint(reg2, level=0.95)
Waiting for profiling to be done...
               2.5 %    97.5 %
(Intercept) 2.480236 11.520680
x1          1.971492  2.013976
x2          2.958461  3.023251

$t$-distribution is used in lm while normal distribution is used in glm when constructing the intervals.

> beta <- summary(reg1)$coefficients[, 1]
    > beta_se <- summary(reg1)$coefficients[, 2]
> cbind(`2.5%` = beta - qt(0.975, n - 3) * beta_se, 
        `97.5%` = beta + qt(0.975, n - 3) * beta_se) #t
                2.5%     97.5%
(Intercept) 2.474742 11.526174
x1          1.971466  2.014002
x2          2.958422  3.023291
> cbind(`2.5%` = beta - qnorm(0.975)*beta_se, 
        `97.5%` = beta + qnorm(0.975)*beta_se) #normal
                2.5%     97.5%
(Intercept) 2.480236 11.520680
x1          1.971492  2.013976
x2          2.958461  3.023251

Answer 3

Short answer, they are exactly the same:

# Simulate data:
set.seed(42)
n <- 1000

x1 <- rnorm(n, mean = 150, sd = 3)
x2 <- rnorm(n, mean = 100, sd = 2)
u  <- rnorm(n)
y  <- 5 + 2*x1 + 3*x2 + u

# Estimate with OLS:
reg1 <- lm(y ~ x1 + x2)
# Estimate with GLS
reg2 <- glm(y ~ x1 + x2, family=gaussian)

# Compare:
require(texreg)
screenreg(l = list(reg1, reg2))

=========================================
                Model 1      Model 2     
-----------------------------------------
(Intercept)        6.37 **       6.37 ** 
                  (2.20)        (2.20)   
x1                 1.99 ***      1.99 ***
                  (0.01)        (0.01)   
x2                 3.00 ***      3.00 ***
                  (0.02)        (0.02)   
-----------------------------------------
R^2                0.99                  
Adj. R^2           0.99                  
Num. obs.          1000          1000       
RMSE               1.00                  
AIC                           2837.66    
BIC                           2857.29    
Log Likelihood               -1414.83    
Deviance                       991.82    
=========================================
*** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05

Longer answer; The glm function fits the model by MLE, however, because of the assumption you made about the link function (in this case normal), you end up with the OLS estimates.