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I am using multilevel modeling in lme4 package in R. With the warning of rescaling variables, how can I find out WHICH variables need rescaling? All variables are centered. Dummy variables are coded as -1 and 1, the variable age has range of -34 and 31 but with square terms. Is it because of the square terms?

Shicun Cui
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  • Yes, rescale all of them except the dummies. You could still rescale dummies too but it is not useful. – Tom Feb 10 '19 at 16:04

1 Answers1

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A reasonable approach is to do a "summary" of the dataset and look at the means and medians of the numerical variables, and also possibly their variances. If you see any that are orders of magnitude different from others, that will give you a clue.

You could just simply standardise all the numeric variables first and see if the model converges. If it does then iteratively de-scale them to see which one(s) is/are causing the problem(s).

Robert Long
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  • are the coefficients of the model fitted with the rescaled variables "ready to use"? Must the new independent variables for prediction of new values (by the fitted model) be scaled as well? – Mateusz1981 Nov 10 '21 at 13:31