[R] Warning message when using "reldist" package

[Jing Shen]

Dear R users,

I'm using the "reldist" add-on package to calculate relative distribution in R as part of my research project. The subject is a general mental health score ranging from 0 to 12 (integer values only) with 0 indicating no mental health problem and positive values meaning some or sever mental health problem.

When I run the programme to compare the scores of population samples from two different years by plotting PDF, for example 1991 to 2005 as I show here, I keep having a problem regarding the smoothing parameter. 

As you can see from the copied workspace image from R, when I specified a smoothing parameter (0.4) in the first time, it showed a warning message. And for the 2nd and 3rd time that I used other smoothing values (2 and 5), no warning message were given. The last time I didn't choose any smoothing value and the computer used a vary small smoothing value, but the graph doesn't look as smooth as the first three ones. It is always the case that it only gives a warning message for the first time no matter what value I choose. And if I don't specify any smoothing parameter and the computer will generate one, in which case no warning message is given but the values computer chooses sometimes are not optimal.

I would be very grateful if anybody could help me with this problem.

Thank you very much!

Best wishes,
Jing Shen


> hse91<-read.table("h:/HSE/hse91p.txt",header=TRUE)
> hse05<-read.table("h:/HSE/hse05p.txt",header=TRUE)
> ghq91<-hse91$ghq12scr
> ghq05<-hse05$ghq12scr
> wgt91<-hse91$wgt
> wgt05<-hse05$wgt 
> g10<-reldist(y=ghq05,yo=ghq91,smooth=0.4,ci=TRUE,ywgt=wgt05,yowgt=wgt91,yolabs=seq(-1,7,by=0.5),ylim=c(0.5,7.0),bar=TRUE,quiet=FALSE,xlab="proportion of the original cohort")
This is mgcv 1.3-25 
Smoothing using 0.4 
Warning message:
fitted rates numerically 0 occurred in: gam.fit(G, family = G$family, control = control, gamma = gamma,  
> 
> g10<-reldist(y=ghq05,yo=ghq91,smooth=2.0,ci=TRUE,ywgt=wgt05,yowgt=wgt91,yolabs=seq(-1,7,by=0.5),ylim=c(0.5,7.0),bar=TRUE,quiet=FALSE,xlab="proportion of the original cohort")
Smoothing using 2 
> 
> g10<-reldist(y=ghq05,yo=ghq91,smooth=5.0,ci=TRUE,ywgt=wgt05,yowgt=wgt91,yolabs=seq(-1,7,by=0.5),ylim=c(0.5,7.0),bar=TRUE,quiet=FALSE,xlab="proportion of the original cohort")
Smoothing using 5 
> 
> g10<-reldist(y=ghq05,yo=ghq91,ci=TRUE,ywgt=wgt05,yowgt=wgt91,yolabs=se
> q(-1,7,by=0.5),ylim=c(0.5,7.0),bar=TRUE,quiet=FALSE,xlab="proportion of the original cohort")
Smoothing using 8.121196e-08