Introduction to Mixed Modeling: Beyond Regression and Analysis of Variance

Introduction to Mixed Modelling provides the reader with a leisurely applied approach to learning the methods presented. The book highlights the use of the software and gives appropriate examples. After finishing the book one gets the feeling that one has just done a lot of examples but along the way one has learnt the necessary bits of the theory. The author uses GenStat and R to illustrate the examples and provide the output. Readers who buy the book can use the GenStat software free of charge for a period of 12 months, while on the other hand R is free anytime. Computer code is also presented, which makes the book friendlier to the first time users of the software. All of the examples are presented in a very detailed manner, with appropriate illustrations, computer code and the output. All is explained in an intuitive narrative, which makes the book easy to read.

The reader who has some previous knowledge on mixed models can probably read the book in a couple of sittings. However, the real essence of the book is the examples and problems given in the text, and redoing them for oneself is the way to learn from this book. Students will appreciate the fact that the author has provided the solutions and even more examples on the book’s website.

Overall, I think this is an excellent book for undergraduate and graduate students or a researcher without much experience in this field. For readers with some background the book can serve as a useful refresher.

Ita Cirovic Donev is a PhD candidate at the University of Zagreb. She hold a Masters degree in statistics from Rice University. Her main research areas are in mathematical finance; more precisely, statistical mehods of credit and market risk. Apart from the academic work she does consulting work for financial institutions.