[R-sig-ME] Crash fitting lmer in lme4_0.999375-4

[Douglas Bates]

Thanks for the report Nick and thanks for including the data so that
we can reproduce the problem.

I don't think I will have time to look at it until next week.  I am
travelling for the rest of the week (and, naturally, still need to
finish my presentation).

On Feb 20, 2008 11:18 AM, Nick Isaac <njbisaac at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I just installed lme4_0.999375-4 and am sad to report unexpected behaviour
> the first time I ran lmer.
>
> > sessionInfo()
> R version 2.6.2 (2008-02-08)
> i386-apple-darwin8.10.1
>
> locale:
> en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/C/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> other attached packages:
> [1] lme4_0.999375-4   Matrix_0.999375-4 lattice_0.17-4
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] grid_2.6.2
>
>
>
> The dataset is attached. A call to:
>
> data<-read.table("ESW_080220.txt",sep="\t",header=T)
> data$W<- 5-log(1+data$CV)
> full1.w.mm <- lmer(ESW ~ Wingspan * Dataset * VCS + (1|Site) + (1|Species),
> data=data, weights=W)
>
>
>
> Produces a crash with the following message:
>
>  *** caught bus error ***
> address 0x0, cause 'non-existent physical address'
>
> Traceback:
>  1: .Call(mer_optimize, ans, verbose)
>  2: mer_finalize(ans, verbose)
>  3: lmer(ESW ~ Wingspan * Dataset * VCS + (1 | Site) + (1 | Species),
> data = data, weights = W)
>
>
>
> I repeated the exercise on another machine, running  the version on CRAN:
>
>
> > sessionInfo()
> R version 2.6.2 (2008-02-08)
> i386-apple-darwin8.10.1
>
> locale:
> en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/C/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> other attached packages:
> [1] lme4_0.99875-9    Matrix_0.999375-4 lattice_0.17-4
>
>
>
>
> The lmer fit the model with a warning:
>
> Warning message:
> In .local(x, ..., value) :
>   Estimated variance for factor 'Site' is effectively zero
>
>
>
> The warning reflects the fact that this model is rather over-specified.
> However, the behaviour in the development version is rather unexpected.
> Best wishes, Nick Isaac
>
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