Doug, I thought perhaps that you might be interested in the comparison of lme to the results for the same models fitted by Richard Jones' carma (I just wrote the R interface to his Fortran code). The code to run the example from the lme help and for the equivalent with carma is in the file below. The two main differences in results are 1. the random coefficients covariance matrix is quite different because lme takes the time origin as zero age whereas carma centres times at the mean (here age). This arbitrariness of results is one of the fundamental problems with random time coefficient models. 2. carma gives the true full likelihood whereas lme gives the so-called restricted likelihood. In my opinion, substituting the REML estimate obtained from the marginal or conditional likelihood back into the full likelihood makes no sense. Best wishes, Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------------ library(nlme) library(growth) # example from lme data(Orthodont) summary(fm1 <- lme(distance ~ age, data = Orthodont)) # random is ~ age summary(fm2 <- lme(distance ~ age + Sex, data = Orthodont, random = ~ 1)) # set up data object distance <- matrix(Orthodont[1],ncol=4,byrow=T) age <- matrix(Orthodont[2],ncol=4,byrow=T) sex <- Orthodont[4][seq(4,108,by=4)] data <- rmna(restovec(distance,times=age),ccov=tcctomat(sex)) rm(Orthodont,age,sex,distance) #model fm1 carma(data,torder=1,pre=rep(1,3),pos=rbind(c(1,1),c(2,2),c(1,2))) # uncorrelated random coefficients carma(data,torder=1,pre=rep(1,2),pos=rbind(c(1,1),c(2,2))) #model fm2 carma(data,ccov=~sex,torder=1,pre=1,pos=c(1,1)) # random coefficient for age carma(data,ccov=~sex,torder=1,pre=rep(1,2),pos=rbind(c(1,1),c(2,2))) # quadratic in age carma(data,ccov=~sex,torder=2,pre=1,pos=c(1,1)) # uncorrelated random coefficients for age carma(data,ccov=~sex,torder=2,pre=rep(1,3),pos=rbind(c(1,1),c(2,2),c(3,3))) # random intercept and AR(1) carma(data,ccov=~sex,torder=1,pre=1,pos=c(1,1),arma=c(1,0,0),par=0.5) # interaction between sex and time carma(data,ccov=~sex,torder=1,inter=1,pre=1,pos=c(1,1)) # interaction between sex and quadratic time carma(data,ccov=~sex,torder=2,inter=2,pre=1,pos=c(1,1)) # interaction between sex and linear time only carma(data,ccov=~sex,torder=2,inter=1,pre=1,pos=c(1,1)) -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._