glmmPQL and Convergence
On 8/19/05, rab45+ at pitt.edu <rab45+ at pitt.edu> wrote:
I fit the following model using glmmPQL from MASS: fit.glmmPQL <- glmmPQL(ifelse(class=="Disease",1,0)~age+x1+x2,random=~1|subject,family=binomial) summary(fit.glmmPQL) The response is paired (pairing denoted by subject), although some subjects only have one response. Also, there is a perfect positive correlation between the paired responses. x1 and x2 can and do differ within each pair. Here is the output:
summary(fit.glmmPQL)
Linear mixed-effects model fit by maximum likelihood
Data: fernando
AIC BIC logLik
30.51277 49.25655 -9.256384
Random effects:
Formula: ~1 | subject
(Intercept) Residual
StdDev: 8.284993 4.113725e-09
Notice the value of the residual standard deviation. It's far too small (it should be approximately 1 for a binomial-response model fit by IRLS). You have perfect prediction in your model and surprisingly that is a problem in these models.
Variance function:
Structure: fixed weights
Formula: ~invwt
Fixed effects: ifelse(class == "Disease", 1, 0) ~ age + x1 + x2
Value Std.Error DF t-value p-value
(Intercept) -35.01862 2.4414559 123 -14.3 0
age 0.59026 0.0441817 123 13.4 0
x1 1.39317 0.0000014 41 1000507.2 0
x2 0.93695 0.0000010 41 915150.3 0
Correlation:
(Intr) age x2
age -0.952
x1 0.000 0.000
x2 0.000 0.000 -0.057
Standardized Within-Group Residuals:
Min Q1 Med Q3 Max
-2.939213e+00 -2.509951e-07 -1.169248e-07 2.999710e-06 3.825035e+00
Number of Observations: 168
Number of Groups: 125
The t-values are huge and the se's are correspondingly tiny. The model
does a great job of discriminating between disease and no disease. But I
have a feeling there is something wrong here. Is there something wrong
with the type of model I'm trying to fit? If it weren't for the pairing I
would just have used glm. Any insights would be appreciated.
Rick B.
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