On Jun 13, 2017, at 9:13 PM, Don Cohen <don-r-help at isis.cs3-inc.com> wrote:
1. Strip down the formula so that only the term that causes the
error is present.
It's not clear what you mean by the term that causes the error.
Here's a different sort of minimal example:
full=lmer(log.corti~z.xtime+(1 +is.alpha2.subordinate+z.infanticide.susceptibility+z.min.co.res
+z.age.at.sample+sin.season+cos.season+ I(z.n.fert.females*z.n.males)||monkeyid),
data=fe.re.xx$data, REML=F, control=contr)
+ + Error in z.n.fert.females * ~z.n.males :
non-numeric argument to binary operator
It's minimal in that leaving out any one of the other terms in the || other
than the I term does not give an error, e.g.,
leave out is.alpha2.subordinate:
full=lmer(log.corti~z.xtime+(1 +z.infanticide.susceptibility+z.min.co.res
+z.age.at.sample+sin.season+cos.season+ I(z.n.fert.females*z.n.males)||monkeyid),
data=fe.re.xx$data, REML=F, control=contr)
+ + >
leave out z.infanticide.susceptibility
full=lmer(log.corti~z.xtime+(1 +is.alpha2.subordinate+z.min.co.res
+z.age.at.sample+sin.season+cos.season+ I(z.n.fert.females*z.n.males)||monkeyid),
data=fe.re.xx$data, REML=F, control=contr)
+ + >
etc.
yes, loads of stuff, but z.n.fert.females and z.n.males are both
numeric, as are is.alpha2.subordinate and z.min.co.res in the
previous examples. If this were the problem it wouldn't work when
I remove those other terms.
none of the terms in the formula appear there
Again, it seems if this were the problem it wouldn't be solved by
removing other terms.
4. Start a new, **clean** R session
I did that, even started on a different machine, did a load to get
the data and library(lme4)
At this point I'd like to know how to interpret the error message:
Error in z.n.fert.females * ~z.n.males
non-numeric argument to binary operator
and what's that ~ all about?