# Trying to understand coef column (and how to convert it to fold change)

**URL:** <https://forum.biobakery.org/t/trying-to-understand-coef-column-and-how-to-convert-it-to-fold-change/3136>\
**Category:** MaAsLin\
**Created:** [February 15, 2022, 2:33pm UTC](https://forum.biobakery.org/t/trying-to-understand-coef-column-and-how-to-convert-it-to-fold-change/3136 "2022-02-15T14:33:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![mrgambero](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/forum.biobakery.org/mrgambero/32/1227_2.png) [@mrgambero](https://forum.biobakery.org/u/mrgambero)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2022, 9:15pm UTC](https://forum.biobakery.org/t/trying-to-understand-coef-column-and-how-to-convert-it-to-fold-change/3136/4 "2022-02-18T21:15:04Z")

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Thanks @Kelsey_Thompson !

I am sorry to be annoying, but I still have doubts about how to do that.  
That question explains how to convert the coefficient to log2fold change in case of a glm with poisson distribution. But I usually use either 'lm" or “negative binomial”. Would that be the same?

I think in case of lm, I do not need to do the following step:  
fc\<- exp(fit$coefficients[2]) ## Antilog coef #2

What about negative binomial?

Thanks for considering this implementation for the future.  
I think it is a good idea to have it has fold change, so it is better quantifiable.  
Now we have this coefficient but we do not really know how to biologically interpret it.

I thank you in advance and for your awesome work!!  
Gabri

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