[R] factanal: error message

[Michael Dewey]

At 17:51 06/10/2007, Steve Friedman wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>
>
>I'm running a factor analysis on a correlation matrix with 32 rows and
>columns.
>
>I get the following error when I issue the command sequence
>
>mich.fac1 <- factanal(michcor, factor=1)
>Error in solve.default(cv) : system is computationally singular: reciprocal
>condition number = 3.24729e-18
>
>
>I'd really appreciate an explanation for this error and a solution to the
>problem

?factanal reveals that

factanal(x, factors, data = NULL, covmat = NULL, n.obs = NA,
          subset, na.action,
          start = NULL, scores = c("none", "regression", "Bartlett"),
          rotation = "varimax", control = NULL, ...)

and

x A formula or a numeric matrix or an object that can be coerced to a 
numeric matrix.
I think you meant covmat = michcor


>Thanks
>Steve
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Michael Dewey
http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk