[R] Step Function Freezing R

[J Dougherty]

There are some points of information you should include.  One, have there been 
recent updates of Windows that may have altered system behaviour?  Two, have 
you updated R during the same period?  Three, have you installed software that 
uses system resources that were available to R before - e.g. has Norton or 
whatever you use to guard your system upgraded?  Four, what versions of 
Windows and Excel are you running?  Five, have you inspected your data for 
corruption?  Six, what changes (data entry, editing, recoding, etc.) have you 
done that might coincide with the changed behaviour?  Seven, have you allowed 
the process to simply run - say overnight?  Nine, how big is you database? 

In essence, your problem sounds like system problem.  The most likely cause is 
a change in software, but without some really clear information on changes on 
your system that could potentially have caused this, you are unlikely to find 
it easily.  One possibility is that a change in software has resulted in 
smaller available resource space.  

JWDougherty

On Thursday 12 November 2009 09:05:34 am Jgabriel wrote:
> I have a question that might not be "kosher" here, but I'm running out
> of options and need some help. Basically using the function "step" is
> freezing R. I am running a model that includes a number of
> interactions on a large data set with a number of dummy variables
> representing whether an event occurred or not. Here's a simplified
> example -
>
> fit = lm(a~b*(c+d+e)*(f+g+h)*(i+j+k))
> regs = step(fit)
>
> at this point R freezes and alternates between "Not Responding" and
> "Running" in Windows task manager. It wasn't always this way. I was
> able to run the same model on the same dataset a couple weeks ago and
> while it took the step function 20-30 minutes to compute the best AIC
> and didn't exclude all the insignificant variables/interactions, it
> served its purpose. Even after uninstalling and reinstalling R and
> RExcel (which I used to load the data set), the problem persists. I
> tried it on a smaller data set and still no luck. This is more of a
> computing issue, so if anyone can point me to a forum better equipped
> to help me out, I will owe you my eternal gratitude. I hate to fill up
> space with such an uninspired question, but like I said I'm running
> out of options.
>
> Thanks,
>
> JGS
>
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