Results from monotonic effect versus dummy variables in brms

[alex_hausmann]

I did find some older comments of his on this matter (link below). But it was quite some time ago, so maybe one has a more solid idea in 2020?

Interpreting elpd_diff - loo package

Question is a straightforward, but unfortunately the answer is not. Short answer: The difference of 1 SE is definitely too small. If n is not small, and there is no bad observation model misspecification (ie. you have made model checking), and there are no khats>0.7, then as a rule of thumb, I would say that difference of 5 SE starts to be on the safe side. A bit longer answer: Firstly, we need to have all PSIS khats<0.7, so that Monte Carlo error is not dominating (in the forthcoming version…