R help - Aug 2006 - metaplot and meta.summaries

Hello,

After looking through the archive and documentation for quite some time, I'd
be very happy
about some help with metaplot and meta.summaries.

metaplot:
---------

Can I change the label size? I've got 126 values and the intersection of the
labels makes
it impossible to read them.

Why do I have to give sumse (Standard Error) and sumnn (Precision) of the
summary
estimate? I can calculate one from the other, right? Just to make sure I'm
not
misunderstanding something.

metaplot(CoeffVector, StdErrorVector, nn=NULL, labels=Name, conf.level=0.95, 
xlab=paste(CoeffNames[j], CoefficientName[i]), 
ylab="Countries",
xlim=NULL, summn=PostCoeffs[1,j], sumse=sqrt(PostVars[1,j]), 
sumnn=1/(PostVars[1,j]), 
summlabel="Summary", 
lwd=2, boxsize=1)


meta.summaries
--------------

What does it mean, when I get the warning message that NaNs were produced in
"pchisq(q,
df, lower.tail, log.p)"? Is there something wrong with my data (there are
no NAs in the
data)?

MetaAnalyse <- meta.summaries(CoeffVector, 
					StdErrorVector, 
					method = "random")

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006, Anne Katrin Heinrichs wrote:
> metaplot:
> ---------
>
> Can I change the label size? I've got 126 values and the intersection
of the labels makes
> it impossible to read them.
Yes. metaplot() accepts the cex graphics parameter. This doesn't alter the 
size of the summary text, so you might want to have no summlabel= and add 
it on later.
> Why do I have to give sumse (Standard Error) and sumnn (Precision) of 
> the summary estimate? I can calculate one from the other, right? Just to 
> make sure I'm not misunderstanding something.
It's an oversight by the designer.  metaplot() was basically designed to 
be called from the plot methods for the meta. objects.

You might also want to look at forestplot(), which is more flexible. I 
don't know how it copes with large numbers of intervals, but if it
doesn't
it would be worth fixing.
> metaplot(CoeffVector, StdErrorVector, nn=NULL, labels=Name,
conf.level=0.95,
> xlab=paste(CoeffNames[j], CoefficientName[i]),
> ylab="Countries",
> xlim=NULL, summn=PostCoeffs[1,j], sumse=sqrt(PostVars[1,j]),
> sumnn=1/(PostVars[1,j]),
> summlabel="Summary",
> lwd=2, boxsize=1)
>
>
> meta.summaries
> --------------
>
> What does it mean, when I get the warning message that NaNs were produced
in "pchisq(q,
> df, lower.tail, log.p)"? Is there something wrong with my data (there
are no NAs in the
> data)?
>
> MetaAnalyse <- meta.summaries(CoeffVector,
> 					StdErrorVector,
> 					method = "random")
>
It means that NaNs were produced.  You should be able to see where from 
the output. It's hard to say more without more information.

 	-thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle