[R-sig-ME] lmer and autocorrelation structures

[Douglas Bates]

On 9/6/07, Douglas Bates <bates at stat.wisc.edu> wrote:
> On 9/6/07, Chris O'Brien <obrienc at email.arizona.edu> wrote:
> > Dear mixed-modelers,
>
> > I'm interested in modelling a dataset using generalized linear mixed models
> > (specifying "family=binomial" with random effects) in which there is
> > temporal autocorrelation in the response. Is there a way to do this in the
> > new lme4 package?  I've used the "correlation" argument in the nlme library
> > to specify a correlation structure for least-square means regression, but
> > this option appears not to be implemented in the new lmer call in the lme4
> > package.   Is such a thing possible (and appropriate) at this time?
> > thanks,
>
> Possible, but only in the fortune("Yoda") sense.  In other words that
> capability is not built into the lme4 package.
>
> I don't think we can comment on the appropriateness of the model
> without more information and perhaps a look at the data.  However,
> until someone writes the code to incorporate an autoregressive
> structure into lmer, the question is moot.

P.S. If the reference to fortune("Yoda") is too obscure, try

install.packages("fortunes"); library(fortunes); fortune("Yoda")