Quoting Ben Bolker <bbolker@gmail.com>:

>   The bleeding-edge version of lme4, lme4a, has some profiling
> capabilities that might (?) be useful.

Thanks for the suggestions! I tried to download and install lme4a but was
unable to because the package "MatrixModels" was not available... Do you
happen to know where I can download this package from?

A Bayesian approach (which you
> would probably have to roll yourself; glmmBUGS exists but did not seem
> flexible enough to deal with crossed random effects the last time I
> looked) would also be useful for stabilizing this kind of estimation
> problem (i.e., assigning a prior would allow the posterior probability
> density to be not quite completely concentrated at prob=0 or prob=1
> ...)  For inspiration you might also try looking in the GLM literature
> under the keyword 'complete separation'.

I did some digging and reading today, and I found a package called brglm(),
which supposedly deals with "complete separation." However, the issue is
that it does not take random effects, which are essential for my model. If
you happen to know any other alternative package, I'd greatly appreciate if
you could let me know. Thanks!

Best,
Xiao

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]


