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R and WinBUGS (via R2WinBUGS) error

2 messages · Lindsay Stirton, Ben Bolker

Original
Lindsay Stirton
# 
Dear UseRs,

Apologies, I tried to post to the list yeasterday, but (for some  
reason) part of my message got missed off. Here's a second attempt.

I am having some problems using R with WinBUGS using the R2WinBUGS
package. Specifically, when I try to run bugs() I get the following
message.

Error in FUN(X[[1L]], ...) :
   .C(..): 'type' must be "real" for this format

To give a little more context, my bugs() command (for a multilevel
ordinal logit  similar to Gelman and Hill, Data Analysis Using
Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models p. 383 is:
+ "ra", "lg")
+     list(C=matrix(0,39,2))
+      }
Error in FUN(X[[1L]], ...) :
   .C(..): 'type' must be "real" for this format
This problem was discussed before  
(https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2008-August/171726.html), but  
the discussion didn't seem to help me. As suggested on that post,  
traceback() gives the following:
6: .C("str_signif", x = x, n = n, mode = as.character(mode), width =  
as.integer(width),
        digits = as.integer(digits), format = as.character(format),
        flag = as.character(flag), result = blank.chars(i.strlen),
        PACKAGE = "base")
5: FUN(X[[1L]], ...)
4: lapply(data.list, formatC, digits = digits, format = "E")
3: write.datafile(lapply(data.list, formatC, digits = digits, format = "E"),
        file.path(dir, data.file))
2: bugs.data(data, dir = getwd(), digits)
1: bugs(data = "Wednesbury.data", inits = "Wednesbury.inits",  
parameters = "Wednesbury.parameters",
        model.file = "p:/Wednesbury09/Wednesbury.bug", n.chains = 1,
        n.burnin = 1000, n.sims = 10000, bugs.directory = "c:/Program  
Files/WinBUGS14/",
        program = "WinBUGS", debug = TRUE)
Any help greatly appreciated.

Lindsay Stirton
School of Law, University of Manchester
Ben Bolker
# 
What you have given us helps a little bit.

Lindsay Stirton <Lindsay.Stirton <at> manchester.ac.uk> writes:
[snip]
[snip]
What this tells us is that the problem occurs while
R2WinBUGS is trying to write the data out to files on disk
whence WinBUGS will pick them up. One of your data items
("n.judge", "n", "n.cut", "y", "judge", "ct", "ra", "lg")
may be wonky.

  What happens if you try out formatC on the data items one
at a time, i.e.

formatC(n.judge,digits=5,format="E")
formatC(n,digits=5,format="E")
etc.?

  This would be easier if you had given us a reproducible
example -- i.e. either your actual data (if it is something
you can share), or preferably a small subset of your data
that demonstrate the problem. One often stumbles across the
answer to problem in the process of trying
to reduce the problem to a small subset ...

  Ben Bolker