[R-sig-Geo] Bug in surf.ls (spatial package)?

[ONKELINX, Thierry]

Dear Roger,

Thank you for this clarification. I was planning to ask our librarian to buy the book anyway.

Thierry

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Roger Bivand [mailto:Roger.Bivand at nhh.no]
Verzonden: di 10-4-2007 20:29
Aan: ONKELINX, Thierry
CC: Prof Brian Ripley; r-sig-geo at stat.math.ethz.ch
Onderwerp: Re: [R-sig-Geo] Bug in surf.ls (spatial package)?
 
On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, ONKELINX, Thierry wrote:

> > -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> > Van: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk] 
> > Verzonden: dinsdag 10 april 2007 16:20
> > Aan: ONKELINX, Thierry
> > CC: r-sig-geo at stat.math.ethz.ch
> > Onderwerp: Re: Bug in surf.ls (spatial package)?
> > 
> > On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, ONKELINX, Thierry wrote:
> > 
> > > Dear listers,
> > >
> > > When fitting a trend surface I noticed that surf.ls() 
> > generates other 
> > > values for the model parameters than an ordinary lm(). 
> > Since both fit, 
> > > in my opinion, the same model to the same data. So I would suppect 
> > > that both would generate the same parameter values. Or am I missing 
> > > something?
> > 
> > You are missing a great deal, including the posting guide.  
> > Who said the ...$beta were the parameters of the 
> > least-squares surface in the raw coordinates?  Certainly not 
> > the help page, and this is explained in the book this 
> > software supports which the posting guide asked you to consult.
> 
> First of all, I'd like to apologize for not having every book or paper
> mentioned in the packages I use. We have a lot of books and papers, but
> not all...
> 
> Secondly, ?surf.ls says that "beta: the coefficients". ?lm gives
> "coefficients: a named vector of coefficients". Neither says that they
> are the parameters for the raw data. But those for lm() are. So I,
> wrongly, presumed those for surf.ls() where for the raw data too.
> 

Please do consult the book reference. In both surf.ls() in spatial and
equivalent functions in gstat, the coordinates are first rescaled to
[-1,1] (p. 420 in the fourth edition of MASS), because at higher orders,
powers of at least the latitude term become very large. For smallish study
areas, a computer cannot distinguish between I(y^3) and I(y^4) when y is
in meters north or south of the Equator. If you try this, you'll see that
lm() drops the coefficients for terms that become indistinguishable, but
surf.ls() handles this numerical problem by rescaling.

> > 
> > 
> > > Some sample code.
> > >
> > > library("gstat")
> > > data(jura)
> > > library("spatial")
> > > surface.surf <- surf.ls(np = 1, x = prediction.dat$Xloc, y = 
> > > prediction.dat$Yloc, z = prediction.dat$Ni) surface.lm <- 
> > lm(Ni ~ Xloc 
> > > + Yloc, data = prediction.dat) surface.surf$beta
> > >
> > > [1] 18.828803  4.823595 -2.375896
> > >
> > > surface.lm$coef
> > >
> > > (Intercept)        Xloc        Yloc
> > > 15.5140337   2.2466673  -0.9299007
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Thierry
> > >
> > > 
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > --
> > > ----
> > > ir. Thierry Onkelinx
> > > Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Reseach Institute 
> > for Nature 
> > > and Forest Cel biometrie, methodologie en kwaliteitszorg / Section 
> > > biometrics, methodology and quality assurance Gaverstraat 4 9500 
> > > Geraardsbergen Belgium tel. + 32 54/436 185 
> > Thierry.Onkelinx at inbo.be 
> > > www.inbo.be
> > >
> > > Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have 
> > carefully 
> > > considered what they do not say.  ~William W. Watt A statistical 
> > > analysis, properly conducted, is a delicate dissection of 
> > > uncertainties, a surgery of suppositions. ~M.J.Moroney
> > >
> > >
> > 
> > -- 
> > 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 272866 (PA)
> > Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
> >
> 
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> 

-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no