[R-sig-ME] Sorry for the false alarm - results from glmer in the released lme4 are consistent with other software

[Douglas Bates]

In an earlier thread with the subject "lme4a, glmer and all that" I
stated that the results of fitting generalized linear mixed models in
the lme4 and lme4a packages were different and I was beginning to
doubt the results from the released version 0.999375-32 of lme4.  I
did discover a programming mistake in the development version, lme4a,
and am working on correcting it.  The results from the released
version, lme4, are consistent with those reported by other software.

In an unrelated development we have discovered one of the reasons that
the lme4 package takes a very long time to load, relative to other
packages.  It has always seemed peculiar that the Matrix package with
dozens of S4 classes and hundreds of methods takes a couple of seconds
to load whereas the much simpler lme4 package (in terms of classes and
methods) takes 5 to 10 times as long.  We have isolated why this
occurs and John Chambers is testing a modification in the methods
package that can avoid this.