# What to do if I find residuals (=deviance) patterns after applying a GAMMA GLM in R?

I have activity data for 6 individuals (ID) obtained using two different formulas (RMS.X16 and VeDBA.X16), and I want to test which of those formulas fit better to my response variable RMS.V13AP.

Here you can see the relationship of RMS.X16 and VeDBA.X16 with RMS.V13AP.

Below you can see also a histogram of my response variable RMS.V13AP (upper left). In the graph appears also the histogram of my response variable with different transformations.

As you can see, RMS.V13AP is positive and continuous, so I decided to make a GLM using a Gamma distribution with a log link. I included ID as a fixed effect and not as a random effect because I want to test if the relationship changes among individuals. To answer the main question (differences between formulas for predicting RMS.V13AP), I did this:

mod1 <- glm(RMS.V13AP ~ VeDBA.X16+ID,data =
mod2 <- glm(RMS.V13AP ~ RMS.X16+ID, data = FormulaValidation.57s,

AIC(mod1,mod2)
df      AIC
mod1  8 3831.017
mod2  8 3812.568

ED.mod1 <- 100* (1-(mod1$$deviance/mod1$$null.deviance)) # Explained deviance
ED.mod1
[1] 62.3574

ED.mod2 <- 100* (1-(mod2$$deviance/mod2$$null.deviance))
ED.mod2
[1] 62.54075


It seems that the formula RMS fits better my data, however differences between RMS and VeDBA are very low according to the explained deviance.

My doubts arise when I make some diagnostic plots. First, I show the plots I usually find in literature:

mod1.diag <- glm.diag(mod1)
mod2.diag <- glm.diag(mod2)
glm.diag.plots(mod1,mod1.diag)
glm.diag.plots(mod2,mod2.diag)


After some searching, I found also this approach to explore residuals (simulations):

library(DHARMa)
sim_nbz  <-  simulate(mod2, nsim =1000)
str(sim_nbz)
sim_nbz = do.call(cbind, sim_nbz)
sim_res_nbz = createDHARMa(simulatedResponse = sim_nbz,
observedResponse =
FormulaValidation.57s\$RMS.V13AP,
fittedPredictedResponse =
predict(mod2),
integerResponse = FALSE)
plotSimulatedResiduals(sim_res_nbz)



The way I see it, there is clear evidence of residual patterns but I don't know what should be next step.

Should I care about those residual patterns? Should I transform my response variable and try to use another type of regression?

• Yes, you should care about residual patterns, and they should follow the theoretical form of the model. With respect to the predictors some transformations might help alleviate the patterns you see. Mar 25, 2020 at 20:58