[R] Factor analysis with R

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Thu, 21 Dec 2000, Sigrid [iso-8859-1] Mönkebeberg wrote:

> 
> I am a user of R, but I don't read current R-mail's, because I use it
> seldom. I should solve a factor analysis, but I don't find a proper R
> function, like the function factanal in S-Plus. Does someone can tell
> me, if there exist an R-analoge- function?

Not as far as I mnow, but I am working on one (and was this afternoon).
It is planned for 1.2.1.

I am not sure tha `factanal in S-Plus' is `proper' though.  One problem
is knowing *exactly* what factor analysis is and what algorithm has been
implemented.  It seems to be defined by some ill-documented code of
Joreskog, based on outdated optimization methods (even when it was
written).  One aim of writing optim() in R was to use it for this.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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