[R] Cholmod error `matrix not positive definite'
Douglas Bates
bates at stat.wisc.edu
Fri Feb 15 20:33:01 CET 2008
On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 3:14 PM, Douglas Bates <bates at stat.wisc.edu> wrote:
> Could you tell us which version of the lme4 package you are using?
> You can just send the output produced by
>
> sessionInfo()
>
> If you can make your data available so we can test it then please do
> so. If the data set is large you could send it to me in private email
> and I will make it available on a web site.
>
> I think that the development version of the lme4 package, available via
>
> install.packages("lme4", repos = "http://r-forge.r-project.org")
>
> should be resistant to that type of error but I am willing to be shown
> otherwise.
Thank you for sending your data in a separate message to me, Martjn.
One problem with your model is that the zone variable takes on only
two levels, "coast" and "inland". It is very difficult to estimate a
variance due to zone, in addtion to a fixed effect for zone, when you
only have two levels. If you wish to indicate that site is nested
within zone but estimate only fixed-effects for zone then you should
write the model as
aphids ~ densroot + zone + (1|zone:site)
This does give the six distinct levels for site within zone.
Using this model specification and the development version of lmer I
was able to fit models with densroot, vitality and totmas as
predictors. A bit of exploratory graphics suggested the model
> m4 <- lmer(aphids~vitality*zone+(1|zone:site), aphids, family=quasipoisson)
> m4
Generalized linear mixed model fit by the Laplace approximation
Formula: aphids ~ vitality * zone + (1 | zone:site)
Data: aphids
AIC BIC logLik deviance
2437 2453 -1212 2425
Random effects:
Groups Name Variance Std.Dev.
zone:site (Intercept) 119.54 10.9334
Residual 75.13 8.6678
Number of obs: 120, groups: zone.site, 6
Fixed effects:
Estimate Std. Error t value
(Intercept) -1.224 6.422 -0.1905
vitality 5.173 2.011 2.5723
zoneinland -8.935 9.714 -0.9198
vitality:zoneinland 9.868 4.746 2.0793
Correlation of Fixed Effects:
(Intr) vitlty znnlnd
vitality -0.252
zoneinland -0.661 0.167
vtlty:znnln 0.107 -0.424 -0.424
or perhaps
> (m5 <- lmer(aphids~vitality*zone+(vitality|zone:site), aphids, family=quasipoisson))
Generalized linear mixed model fit by the Laplace approximation
Formula: aphids ~ vitality * zone + (vitality | zone:site)
Data: aphids
AIC BIC logLik deviance
2239 2261 -1112 2223
Random effects:
Groups Name Variance Std.Dev. Corr
zone:site (Intercept) 291.78 17.0815
vitality 677.85 26.0355 -0.973
Residual 29.52 5.4333
Number of obs: 120, groups: zone.site, 6
Fixed effects:
Estimate Std. Error t value
(Intercept) -0.9467 9.7669 -0.0969
vitality 4.7625 14.8494 0.3207
zoneinland -5.7539 14.0201 -0.4104
vitality:zoneinland 6.2250 21.1767 0.2940
Correlation of Fixed Effects:
(Intr) vitlty znnlnd
vitality -0.973
zoneinland -0.697 0.678
vtlty:znnln 0.682 -0.701 -0.972
The enclosed plot was produced by
xyplot(sqrt(aphids) ~ vitality | zone, aphids, groups = site, type =
c("g", "p", "smooth"))
> On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 10:36 AM, Martijn Vandegehuchte
> <martijn.vandegehuchte at ugent.be> wrote:
> > Dear R-users,
> >
> > I'm new to R, so my apologies if this question doesn't make sense.
> >
> > I've tried the following model in lmer, and it works perfectly:
> > model<-lmer(aphids~densroot+zone+(1|zone/site), family=quasipoisson)
> >
> > But if I try the exact same model with a different variable, totmas, the model looks as follows:
> > model<-lmer(aphids~totmas+zone+(1|zone/site), family=quasipoisson)
> >
> > Totmas is also a continuous variable just like densroot, but in this case I receive the following message:
> >
> > CHOLMOD warning: &߆e
> > Error in objective(.par, ...) :
> > Cholmod error `matrix not positive definite' at file:../Supernodal/t_cholmod_super_numeric.c, line 613
> >
> > Moreover, if I test yet another continuous variable "vitality", to my surprise R just crashes completely.
> >
> >
> > This is a mystery to me, especially because the variables totmas or vitality don't give any problem when I build the exact same models in SAS with proc glimmix...
> >
> > Does someone have experience with this type of problem?
> >
> > Thank you in advance,
> >
> > Martijn.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Martijn Vandegehuchte
> > Ghent University
> > Department Biology
> > Terrestrial Ecology Unit
> > K.L.Ledeganckstraat 35
> > B-9000 Ghent
> > telephone: +32 (0)9/264 50 84
> > e-mail: martijn.vandegehuchte at ugent.be
> >
> > website TEREC: www.ecology.ugent.be/terec
> >
> > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
> >
>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: aphids.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 18230 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/attachments/20080215/4fcd3d07/attachment.pdf
More information about the R-help
mailing list