[R-sig-ME] GAMM4 CHOLMOD error

[Chato Osio]

Dear List,

I am trying to fit a model in gamm4 but keep running into errors I
can't seem to solve.

My model simplified model is:
 gamm4(log(kg_day) ~ s(year) , random = ~(1 | country), weights =
1/fishing_day, data = temp, REML = F)

The error I receive  is:

CHOLMOD error:
Error in crossprod(root.phi %*% Zt) :
 Cholmod error 'problem too large' at file:../Core/cholmod_aat.c, line 174

The error from what I understand comes from the package MATRIX. Is
this a bug or is it an intrinsic limitation with a "large" dataset? My
dataset is

dim(temp)
[1] 161301      7

summary(temp2)
      year          kg_day              HP          country
 Min.     : 1868   Min.   :    0.2   Min.   :    0.0   ES  :63084
 1st Qu.: 1996   1st Qu.:   75.2   1st Qu.:  210.5   FR  :86825
 Median :1999   Median :  160.7   Median :  423.6   ITA :11285
 Mean   :1997   Mean   :  246.9   Mean   :  366.5   JUGO:   74
 3rd Qu.:2003   3rd Qu.:  347.9   3rd Qu.:  423.6   TUNI:   33
 Max.   : 2009   Max.   :11076.1   Max.   : 1200.0
                                  NA's   :15275.0
     area            fishing_day                type_trawler
 Length:161301      Min.   :   0.300   motor          :161269
 Class :character   1st Qu.:   1.000   pair_motor     :     3
 Mode  :character   Median :   1.000   pairsailtrawler:    15
                    Mean   :   2.249   steamtrawler   :    14
                    3rd Qu.:   1.000
                    Max.   :7074.000


If I run on the same data an identical lmer model without a smoother
on year I have no problems.
lmer( log(kg_day)~ year+(1|country), weights=1/fishing_day,
data=temp2,  REML = F)

> summary(allmer)
Linear mixed model fit by maximum likelihood
Formula: log(kg_day) ~ year + (1 | country)
   Data: temp
    AIC    BIC  logLik deviance REMLdev
 464720 464760 -232356   464712  464726
Random effects:
 Groups   Name        Variance Std.Dev.
 country  (Intercept) 1.0744   1.0365
 Residual             1.0551   1.0272
Number of obs: 161301, groups: country, 5

Fixed effects:
              Estimate Std. Error t value
(Intercept) -2.3843311  0.6885985  -3.463
year         0.0039580  0.0002291  17.275

Correlation of Fixed Effects:
     (Intr)
year -0.660



> sessionInfo()
R Under development (unstable) (2011-09-04 r56935)
Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
 [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
 [7] LC_PAPER=C                 LC_NAME=C
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] gamm4_0.1-3        mgcv_1.7-6         lme4_0.999375-41   Matrix_0.9996875-3
[5] lattice_0.19-33

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] grid_2.14.0   nlme_3.1-102  stats4_2.14.0 tools_2.14.0

Thanks for any suggestion/help

Chato