Answer to Question #252323 in Statistics and Probability for dae

Question

What is the difference between a fixed effects model and a random effects model for the randomized block design

Answer 1

The most important practical difference between the two is this: Random effects are estimated with partial pooling, while fixed effects are not. Partial pooling means that, if you have few data points in a group, the group's effect estimate will be based partially on the more abundant data from other groups.