Dear All, I'd like to ask fro any pointers to code in any package out there that can (even partially) handle the following situation: say we have the linear model # toy data y <- rnorm(100) time <- runif(100, 0, 5) treat <- gl(2, 50, labels = c("placebo", "active")) sex <- gl(2, 1, 100, labels = c("male", "female")) bmi <- runif(100, 20, 35) # linear model fit lmFit <- lm(y ~ (time + I(time^2) + I(time^3))*sex + bmi*treat) Now, I'd like to compute the derivative of the linear predictor with respect to 'time'. I thought of the following procedure: step 1: create a new formula that is the derivative of the original formula wrt 'time'. step 2: feed this to model.matrix(). step 3: multiple with the corresponding estimated coefficients. Is this a reasonable way to attack this problem or is there another more optimal solution -- I'd like to obtain a solution as generalizable as possible. Thanks in advance. Best, Dimitris -- Dimitris Rizopoulos Assistant Professor Department of Biostatistics Erasmus University Medical Center Address: PO Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, the Netherlands Tel: +31/(0)10/7043478 Fax: +31/(0)10/7043014