dear Luciano ,
   I have come across your problems,and I have been told  these were just
 because there are  too many random effects in your model,and you can search
the discussion I had posted in this archive.
yours


> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:28:44 -0800 (PST)
> From: Luciano La Sala <lucianolasala@yahoo.com.ar>
> Subject: [R-sig-ME] naive questions about model building
> and error
>       output
> To: r-sig-mixed-models@r-project.org
> Message-ID:
> <447014.18802.qm@web59906.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> Dear R-experts,
> Quite new to R on this end, so I hope toy can help me out
> here:
>
> I am running version 2.7.1 on Windows Vista. I have small
> dataset which consists of:
>
> # NestID: nest indicator for each chicken. Siblings sharing
> the same nest have the same nest indicator.
>
> # Chick: chick indicator consisting of a unique ID for each
> single chick.
>
> # Year: 1, 2.
>
> # ClutchSize: 1-, 2- , 3-eggs.
>
> # HO: hatching order within each clutch (1, 2, 3 [first,
> second and third-hatched chick]).
>
> # SibComp: sibling competence: present/ absent (0, 1)
>
> # Death10: death at ten days post-hatch (0, 1)
>
> In order to account for lack of independence at the nest
> level (many
> chicks are nested in nest... aha!), I'd like to run a
> GLMM with random slopes and intercepts for nests.
>
> Using lmer, my model for survival at 10 days, for example,
> would read (or not!) as follows:
>
> model1 <- lmer(Death10 ~ HO + ClutchSize + Sibcomp +
> Year + (HO+0|NestID) + (1|NestID), family=binomial, 1)
>
> summary(model)
>
> The output give me the following error:
>
> Error en mer_finalize(ans, verbose) : q = 416 > n = 198
>
> 1. Whay does this error mean? I was told that my model
> fails to converge.
>
> 2. If so, is there any solution to a lack of convergence?
>
> 3. Maybe I could use a model with only random intercept
> (See below)?
>
> model2 <-lmer(Death10 ~ HO + ClutchSize + Sibcomp + Year
> + (1|NestID), family=binomial, 1)
>
> I look forward to receiving your two cent?s worth.
>
> Best, Luciano

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