R help - Jul 2006 - How to pass eval.max from lme() to nlminb?

Dear R community,

I'm fitting a complex mixed-effects model that requires numerous
iterations and function evaluations.  I note that nlminb accepts a
list of control parameters, including eval.max.  Is there a way to
change the default eval.max value for nlminb when it is being called
from lme?

Thanks for any thoughts,

Andrew
-- 
Andrew Robinson  
Department of Mathematics and Statistics            Tel: +61-3-8344-9763
University of Melbourne, VIC 3010 Australia         Fax: +61-3-8344-4599
Email: a.robinson at ms.unimelb.edu.au         http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au

G'day Andrew,
>>>>> "AR" == Andrew Robinson <A.Robinson at
ms.unimelb.edu.au> writes:
    AR> I'm fitting a complex mixed-effects model that requires
    AR> numerous iterations and function evaluations.  I note that
    AR> nlminb accepts a list of control parameters, including
    AR> eval.max.  Is there a way to change the default eval.max value
    AR> for nlminb when it is being called from lme?
Looking at the code of lme.formula, I can only find this snippet:

[...]
        optRes <- if (controlvals$opt == "nlminb") {
            nlminb(c(coef(lmeSt)), function(lmePars) -logLik(lmeSt, 
                lmePars), control = list(iter.max = controlvals$msMaxIter, 
                trace = controlvals$msVerbose))
        }
        else {
            optim(c(coef(lmeSt)), function(lmePars) -logLik(lmeSt, 
                lmePars), control = list(trace = controlvals$msVerbose, 
                maxit = controlvals$msMaxIter, reltol = if (numIter == 
                  0) controlvals$msTol else 100 * .Machine$double.eps), 
                method = controlvals$optimMethod)
        }
[...]

this seems to indicate that you can only change the values for
'iter.max' and 'trace' in the call to 'nlminb()' by
setting values for
'msMaxIter' and 'msVerbose', using 'lmeControl', when
calling 'lme()'.

Cheers,

        Berwin

========================== Full address ===========================Berwin A
Turlach                      Tel.: +61 (8) 6488 3338 (secr)
School of Mathematics and Statistics        +61 (8) 6488 3383 (self)      
The University of Western Australia   FAX : +61 (8) 6488 1028
35 Stirling Highway                   
Crawley WA 6009                e-mail: berwin at maths.uwa.edu.au
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