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lmer and autocorrelation structures

4 messages · Chris O'Brien, Douglas Bates

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Dear mixed-modelers,

I'm interested in modelling a dataset using generalized linear mixed models 
(specifying "family=binomial" with random effects) in which there is 
temporal autocorrelation in the response. Is there a way to do this in the 
new lme4 package?  I've used the "correlation" argument in the nlme library 
to specify a correlation structure for least-square means regression, but 
this option appears not to be implemented in the new lmer call in the lme4 
package.   Is such a thing possible (and appropriate) at this time?
thanks,

chris o'brien
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On 9/6/07, Chris O'Brien <obrienc at email.arizona.edu> wrote:
Possible, but only in the fortune("Yoda") sense.  In other words that
capability is not built into the lme4 package.

I don't think we can comment on the appropriateness of the model
without more information and perhaps a look at the data.  However,
until someone writes the code to incorporate an autoregressive
structure into lmer, the question is moot.
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On 9/6/07, Douglas Bates <bates at stat.wisc.edu> wrote:
P.S. If the reference to fortune("Yoda") is too obscure, try

install.packages("fortunes"); library(fortunes); fortune("Yoda")
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On 9/6/07, Douglas Bates <bates at stat.wisc.edu> wrote:
P.P.S.  I have always felt that to qualify as a Yodaism, Simon's first
sentence should have been "R this is.", not "This is R."