Hierarchical linear regression

In the previous chapter, we learned about the rudiments of hierarchical models. We can apply this concept to linear regression as well. This allows models to deal with inferences at the group level and estimations above the group level. As we already saw, this is done by including hyperpriors.

We are going to create eight related data groups, including one group with a single data point:

N = 20
M = 8
idx = np.repeat(range(M-1), N)
idx = np.append(idx, 7)
np.random.seed(314)

alpha_real = np.random.normal(2.5, 0.5, size=M)
beta_real = np.random.beta(6, 1, size=M)
eps_real = np.random.normal(0, 0.5, size=len(idx))

y_m = np.zeros(len(idx))
x_m = np.random.normal(10, 1, len(idx))
y_m = alpha_real[idx] + beta_real[idx] * x_m + eps_real

_, ax = plt.subplots(2, 4, figsize=(10, 5), sharex=True, sharey=True)
ax = np.ravel(ax)
j, k = 0, N
for i in range(M):
    ax[i].scatter...