[R-sig-ME] Lmer for negative binomial data

[Douglas Bates]

As the message indicates, the negative binomial family is not defined
as a glm family.  The glm.nb function is a special-purpose function
for fitting that model.  I'm not really sure what modifications would
be needed to glmer to be able to fit such a model but I fear that they
would not be trivial.

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 9:35 AM, Renwick, A. R. <a.renwick at abdn.ac.uk> wrote:
> I am trying to run a glmm with a negative binomial distribution but am having difficulty coding it.
> I ran a glm.nb to obtain a value for theta and then used in in the lmer model as below:
>
>  mix<-lmer(realdis~width+(1|site),family=negative.binomial(theta=0.43),data=move)
>
> However, I keep getting error messages:
>
> Error in famType(glmFit$family) :
>  unknown GLM family: 'Negative Binomial(0.43)'
>
> If anybody could enlighten me to the best way to procede it would be much apprecaited.
>
> Anna
>
> Anna Renwick
> Zoology Building
> School of Biological Sciences
> University of Aberdeen
> Aberdeen
> AB24 2TZ
>
>
> The University of Aberdeen is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013683.
>
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