Release of Design library; update of Hmisc library

[Frank E Harrell Jr]

The Design library has been fully ported to R except for Cox proportional hazards regression modeling (using Therneau's survival package) which will be available in about two weeks.  It will take much longer to make all the example code executable, is it currently contains many examples for which data are not provided.  Thanks to Xiao Gang Fan <xiao.gang.fan1 at libertysurf.fr> who kindly compiled Design for Windows.  I also thank Doug Bates <bates at stat.wisc.edu> and Charles Berry <cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu> who provided details to make it easy to change LINPACK calls from S-Plus to R, and Robert Gentleman <rgentlem at jimmy.harvard.edu> and Thomas Lumley <tlumley at u.washington.edu> who provided help in dealing with formula terms objects.

The Design library implements methods used in my 2001 Springer book Regression Modeling Strategies (see http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/rms).  The web page for Design is
http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/s/Design.html from which you
can download the ready-to-install package.  See
http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/s/help/Design/html/Overview.html 
for a detailed overview of the library.

Design does regression modeling, testing, estimation, validation, graphics, prediction, and typesetting by storing enhanced model design attributes in the fit.  Design is a collection of about 180 functions that assist and streamline modeling, especially for biostatistical and epidemiologic applications.  It also contains new functions for binary and ordinal logistic regression models and the Buckley-James multiple regression model for right-censored responses, and implements penalized maximum likelihood estimation for logistic and ordinary linear models.  Design works with almost any regression model, but it was especially written to work with logistic regression, Cox regression, accelerated failure time models, and ordinary linear models.  

You should install the Hmisc library before using Design, as a few of Design's options use Hmisc functions, and Hmisc has several functions useful for data analysis (especially data reduction and imputation).


Peter Malewski <peter.malewski at gmx.de> provided many more bug fixes for the Hmisc library, and Xiao Gang Fan kindly compiled the latest Hmisc for Windows.  New versions of Hmisc for all platforms may be obtained from http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/s/library/r .  The new versions are required when using Design.

-- 
Frank E Harrell Jr              Prof. of Biostatistics & Statistics
Div. of Biostatistics & Epidem. Dept. of Health Evaluation Sciences
U. Virginia School of Medicine  http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat
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