[R-sig-ME] Model specification help

[Andrew Perrin]

Update: I tried the same model on a 10-percent random sample and it 
completed fine:

> grades.10pct.lmer<-lmer(grade.pt ~ (1|stud.id) + (1|instr.id) + 
(1|cour.dep),n
ewgrades.10pct,control=list(gradient = FALSE, niterEM = 0, msVerbose = 1))
   0      368526.: 0.114490 0.0870205 0.00154286
   1      353650.: 0.125362 0.292639 0.980115
   2      351398.: 0.222252 0.783158 0.978312
   3      351303.: 0.186460 0.779040 0.977594
   4      351290.: 0.151424 0.770734 0.976153
   5      351274.: 0.168863 0.739213 0.975204
   6      351273.: 0.161381 0.726354 0.973485
   7      351273.: 0.166878 0.716955 0.963202
   8      351269.: 0.167807 0.742046 0.904732
   9      351269.: 0.162145 0.739476 0.903375
  10      351268.: 0.165429 0.737807 0.898187
  11      351238.: 0.165235 0.751137 0.505946
  12      351233.: 0.158653 0.728281 0.461245
  13      351223.: 0.162827 0.729269 0.360067
  14      351221.: 0.165015 0.728947 0.324127
  15      351219.: 0.158737 0.728858 0.252385
  16      351218.: 0.169401 0.730054 0.229288
  17      351217.: 0.164054 0.726687 0.217478
  18      351217.: 0.163587 0.723005 0.242674
  19      351217.: 0.164458 0.725164 0.235951
  20      351217.: 0.164303 0.725227 0.234643
  21      351217.: 0.164319 0.725163 0.234738
> summary(grades.10pct.lmer)
Linear mixed-effects model fit by REML
Formula: grade.pt ~ (1 | stud.id) + (1 | instr.id) + (1 | cour.dep)
    Data: newgrades.10pct
     AIC    BIC  logLik MLdeviance REMLdeviance
  351225 351265 -175608     351212       351217
Random effects:
  Groups   Name        Variance Std.Dev.
  instr.id (Intercept) 0.067380 0.25958
  stud.id  (Intercept) 0.297357 0.54530
  cour.dep (Intercept) 0.096256 0.31025
  Residual             0.410055 0.64036
number of obs: 167654, groups: instr.id, 7198; stud.id, 5471; cour.dep, 97

Fixed effects:
             Estimate Std. Error t value
(Intercept)  3.19796    0.03476   92.01


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J Perrin - andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu - http://perrin.socsci.unc.edu
Assistant Professor of Sociology; Book Review Editor, _Social Forces_
University of North Carolina - CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA
New Book: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/178592.ctl