[R-sig-ME] Questions about design and convergence warnings

Dube, Umber udube at wustl.edu
Tue Oct 3 22:50:29 CEST 2017


Thanks for your responses.

Thierry,

The first case is correct. For example, the skin is an organ and the different layers of the skin (epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis) can be considered tissues. So in my experiment I have collected the same tissues originating from different organs which are either healthy or diseased.

Good call on the species effect. I've dropped one of the species for whom I had only healthy data. This has resulted in fewer convergence warnings as I perform the glmer with each gene. I've also noticed that even those genes for which I do produce convergence warnings will converge if I try using other optimizers. I understand this provides additional evidence to support the warnings being false positives.

---

David,

I hadn't considered that. If I'm understanding correctly, you would recommend including species:tissue in my model?

---

All,

Is it appropriate to model batch as a random effect, or should I include it as a fixed effect?


Thanks,

Umber


________________________________
From: Farrar, David <Farrar.David at epa.gov>
Sent: Monday, October 2, 2017 1:21:45 PM
To: Dube, Umber
Subject: RE: [R-sig-ME] Questions about design and convergence warnings

Dear Umber,
It seems your model would not support a conclusion that the effect on a certain tissue would depend on the species, an interaction.
Is that intentional?
David

-----Original Message-----
From: R-sig-mixed-models [mailto:r-sig-mixed-models-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Thierry Onkelinx
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 7:35 AM
To: Dube, Umber <udube at wustl.edu>
Cc: r-sig-mixed-models at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R-sig-ME] Questions about design and convergence warnings

Dear Umber,

Can you clarify what a tissue is? Distinct parts of an organ (tissue 1 for organ 1 refers to the same part as tissue 1 for organ 2)? Or merely different samples for the same organ (no link between tissue 1 between organs). Tissue as random effect is only relevant in the first case. In the latter case is depends on the number of replicates per tissue:organ. In case of one replication go for (1|Organ), in case of multiple replications go for (1|Organ/Tissue).

It looks like you have very strong species effects. That is an indication for quasi-complete separation, which can trigger convergence warnings.

Best regards,

ir. Thierry Onkelinx
Statisticus/ Statistician

Vlaamse Overheid / Government of Flanders INSTITUUT VOOR NATUUR- EN BOSONDERZOEK / RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR NATURE AND FOREST Team Biometrie & Kwaliteitszorg / Team Biometrics & Quality Assurance thierry.onkelinx at inbo.be Kliniekstraat 25, B-1070 Brussel www.inbo.be<http://www.inbo.be>

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2017-09-28 16:58 GMT+02:00 Dube, Umber <udube at wustl.edu>:
> Thanks for your continued development of lme4 and all the support you've provided.
>
> This is my first mixed model analysis. I've done my best to read over the past messages and think I've found a proper method for performing it, but I would like to verify that is correct.
>
> I'm interested in performing a generalized linear mixed model analysis on RNA-sequencing data from different tissues derived from the same organ (I have 4 different tissues from ~160 diseased organs, ~60 healthy organs).
>
> I have been modelling the following as fixed effects:
> RNA Integrity Number (RIN) - quality of the total RNA extracted from
> each tissues (continuous) Post-mortem Interval (PMI) - how much time
> elapsed following death until the tissue was frozen (continuous) Sex -
> genetic sex of the organ (categorical) Age at death (AOD) - age of
> organ at death (continuous) Species - species of organ (categorical)
> Gene -  normalized count data of gene expression (continuous)
>
> I have been modelling the following as random effects:
> Batch (categorical)
>
> I understand that I have a nested model Organ/Tissue, but after reading (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19414336/using-glmer-for-nested-data), I modeled tissue as a fixed effect due to the small numbers (4 tissues).
>
> Altogether, my model is:
>
> glmer(Disease ~ RIN + SEX + AOD + PMI + Species + (1|batch) + Tissue +
> (1|Tissue:Organ) + Gene, data=NormDEGenes, family=binomial(),
> control=glmerControl(optCtrl=list(maxfun=1e9) ) )
>
> I unfortunately get convergence warnings with these models, but after going through the ?convergence documentation I hope they are false positives.
>
> Warning messages:
> 1: In checkConv(attr(opt, "derivs"), opt$par, ctrl = control$checkConv,  :
>   unable to evaluate scaled gradient
> 2: In checkConv(attr(opt, "derivs"), opt$par, ctrl = control$checkConv,  :
>   Model failed to converge: degenerate  Hessian with 1 negative
> eigenvalues
>
> To address this:
>
> 1) I've centered and scaled my continous predictors
>
> 2) I've checked for singularity #False
>
> 3) I've printed and compared with internal calculations
>
> 4) I've tried all available optimizers. I believe all of them have failed to converge, but they all end up with approximately the same log-liklihoods.
>
>
>> ss$ fixef ## extract fixed effects
>         (Intercept)     RIN_scale       SEXF    AOD_scale       PMI_scale       Species1        Species2        Species3        Tissue1 Tissue2 Tissue3 Gene
> bobyqa  0.11463   -0.41005      0.409846        -0.07834        -0.65198        14.79972        13.30085        14.88501        -0.35383        -0.31039        0.666657        -2.42662
> Nelder_Mead     -0.10894        -0.41005        0.40988 -0.07834        -0.652  15.02298        13.52411        15.10837        -0.35371        -0.31033        0.666808        -2.42659
> nlminbw 0.067   -0.41005        0.409846        -0.07834        -0.65198        14.84728        13.34841        14.93257        -0.35383        -0.3104 0.666653        -2.4266
> optimx.L-BFGS-B 0.066515        -0.40992        0.40951 -0.07822        -0.65189        14.84686        13.34846        14.93227        -0.35369        -0.3102 0.666332        -2.42644
> nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_NELDERMEAD   -0.19423        -0.40082        0.401142        -0.07745        -0.63582        14.74898        13.28662        14.83122        -0.3464 -0.30534        0.646181        -2.36802
> nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_BOBYQA       -0.19423        -0.40082         0.401142       -0.07745        -0.63582        14.74898        13.28662        14.83122        -0.3464 -0.30534        0.646181        -2.36802
>
>
>> ss$ llik ## log-likelihoods
>         bobyqa  Nelder_Mead     nlminbw optimx.L-BFGS-B nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_NELDERMEAD   nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_BOBYQA
>         -327.896        -327.896        -327.896        -327.896        -327.933        -327.933
>
>> ss$ sdcor ## SDs and correlations
>                 Organ:Tissue.(Intercept)        batch.(Intercept)
>         bobyqa  3.68E-05        0.520826
>         Nelder_Mead     5.56E-03        0.52084
>         nlminbw 3.10E-08        0.520826
>         optimx.L-BFGS-B 0.00E+00        0.52084
>         nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_NELDERMEAD   4.56E-08         0.517555
>         nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_BOBYQA       4.56E-08        0.517555
>
>
>
>> ss$ theta ## Cholesky factors
>                 Organ:Tissue.(Intercept)        batch.(Intercept)
>         bobyqa  3.68E-05        0.520826
>         Nelder_Mead     5.56E-03        0.52084
>         nlminbw 3.10E-08        0.520826
>         optimx.L-BFGS-B 0.00E+00        0.52084
>         nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_NELDERMEAD   4.56E-08        0.517555
>         nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_BOBYQA       4.56E-08        0.517555
>
>
>> ss$ which.OK ## which fits worked
>         bobyqa   Nelder_Mead     nlminbw        nmkbw   optimx.L-BFGS-B  nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_NELDERMEAD  nloptwrap.NLOPT_LN_BOBYQA
>         TRUE    TRUE    TRUE    FALSE   TRUE    TRUE    TRUE
>
>
> I would appreciate comment on my design, convergence warnings, and troubleshooting results.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Umber
>
>
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>
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