Resume terminated lmer fit if verbose=TRUE?

Thanks to Harold for pointing out the start argument and indicating
that the verbose output can be supplied as its value. Thanks also to
both Harold and Ben for warning on over-parameterization, though it
may not fully apply here as my model is of the form "y ~ (1|random) +
V1*V2*V3*V4*V5*V6*V7". (well, I might have a priori reason to
eliminate one or two fixed effects...)

Mike

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote:
On 07/27/2011 09:29 AM, Doran, Harold wrote:

Yes. See ?lmer and the start argument. You can provide the function
with starting values, which can come as the last iteration of the
output from verbose. 100 hours is a ridiculous amount of computing
time.

 Oops. I was wrong (thanks).  I was thinking of lme.

 A common theme on this list seems to be that people set up models of
the form

response ~ (a lot of fixed effects) + (a lot of fixed effects|grouping)

 The problem here is that n fixed effects  interacting with the
grouping variable means n*(n+1) variance-covariance parameters, which is
often slow to fit ... see e.g.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.lme4.devel/6308 ...

You might want to check your model and make sure it isn't
overparameterized.

-----Original Message----- From:
r-sig-mixed-models-bounces at r-project.org
[mailto:r-sig-mixed-models- bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of
Mike Lawrence Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 9:16 AM To:
r-sig-mixed-models at r-project.org Subject: [R-sig-ME] Resume
terminated lmer fit if verbose=TRUE?

Hi folks,

I ran a binomial lmer on a large data set with lots of levels of a
random effect (1000+) and a large fixed effects structure (7
variables all interacting). My local machine wasn't up to the task
(it needs about 16GB of memory so far as I can tell), so I put it
on a serial node on a supercomputer to which I have access. I asked
for 100 hours of compute time, but it seems that the model went
over time and the process was terminated by the system's queue.
However, I ran it in verbose mode and have all the output, so I'm
wondering if there's any way to use this information to resubmit
the job and have it resume where it left off. Any ideas?

Cheers,

Mike

-- Mike Lawrence Graduate Student Department of Psychology
Dalhousie University

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