Hello, I am implementing the BoxCox transformation for multiple regression using the function boxcox() from library MASS (this seems to be the best one). To avoid negative values in the variable to be transformed however, one must specify a shift parameter. However different choices for the value of the shift parameter result in different estimates for the exponent (lambda) and in different values for the maximum likelihood of the estimate. I would like to know if a function is available that will simultaneously estimate both the lambda and the shift in a BoxCox transformation. Since in general, the general BoxCox transformation requires specification of both of these parameters (whether or not the variable takes on negative values) would there be a reason why the shift parameter has been dropped from the BoxCox estimation? Any comments or thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks, Ernest