[R] [FORGED] Regression with factors ?

[Jeff Newmiller]

I have seen less sensical questions.

It would be nice if the example were a bit more complete (as in it should have excess degrees of freedom and an answer) and less like a homework problem (which are off topic here). It would of course also be helpful if the OP were to conform to the Posting Guide, particularly in respect to using plain text email. 

It looks like the kind of nonlinear optimization problem that evolutionary algorithms are often applied to. It doesn't look (to me) like a typical problem that factors get applied to in formulas though, because multiple instances of the same factor variable are present.
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On July 9, 2016 4:59:30 PM PDT, Rolf Turner <r.turner at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>On 09/07/16 20:52, stn021 wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I would like to analyse a model like this:
>>
>> y = 1 *  ( 1 - ( x1 - x2 )  ^ 2   )
>>
>> x1 and x2 are not continuous variables but factors, so the
>observation
>> contain the level.
>> Its numerical value is unknown and is to be estimated with the model.
>>
>>
>> The observations look like this:
>>
>> y        x1     x2
>> 0.96  Alice  Bob
>> 0.84  Alice  Charlie
>> 0.96  Bob   Charlie
>> 0.64  Dave Alice
>> etc.
>>
>> Each person has a numerical value. Here for example Alice = 0.2 and
>Bob =
>> 0.4
>>
>> Then y = 0.96 = 1* ( 1- ( 0.2-0.4 ) ^ 2 ) , see first observation.
>>
>> How can this be done in R ?
>
>
>This question makes about as little sense as it is possible to imagine.
>
>cheers,
>
>Rolf Turner