English

On the use of ordered factors as explanatory variables

Methodology 2023-11-27 v2

Abstract

Consider a regression or some regression-type model for a certain response variable where the linear predictor includes an ordered factor among the explanatory variables. The inclusion of a factor of this type can take place is a few different ways, discussed in the pertaining literature. The present contribution proposes a different way of tackling this problem, by constructing a numeric variable in an alternative way with respect to the current methodology. The proposed techniques appears to retain the data fitting capability of the existing methodology, but with a simpler interpretation of the model components.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.03634,
  title  = {On the use of ordered factors as explanatory variables},
  author = {Adelchi Azzalini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.03634},
  year   = {2023}
}