Thomas, 
Thanks a lot. This solves my problem.  

Wayne (Yanwei) Zhang
Statistical Research 
>CNA

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Lumley [mailto:tlum...@u.washington.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 11:24 AM
To: Zhang,Yanwei
Cc: r-help@r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Help on glm and optim

On Thu, 2 Sep 2010, Zhang,Yanwei wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I'm trying to use the "optim" function to replicate the results  from the 
> "glm" using an example from the help page of "glm", but I could not get the 
> "optim" function to work. Would you please point out where I did wrong? 
> Thanks a lot.
>
> The following is the code:
>
> # Step 1: fit the glm
> clotting <- data.frame(
>    u = c(5,10,15,20,30,40,60,80,100),
>    lot1 = c(118,58,42,35,27,25,21,19,18),
>    lot2 = c(69,35,26,21,18,16,13,12,12))
> fit1 <- glm(lot1 ~ log(u), data=clotting, family=Gamma)
>
> # Step 2: use optim
> # define loglikelihood function to be maximized over
> # theta is a vector of three parameters: intercept, cofficient for log(u) and 
> dispersion parameter
> loglik <- function(theta,data){
>        E <- 1/(theta[1]+theta[2]*log(data$u))
>        V <- theta[3]*E^2
>        loglik <- 
> sum(dgamma(data$lot1,shape=1/theta[3],rate=1/(E*theta[3]),log=T))
>        return(loglik)
> }
>
> # use the glm result as initial values
> theta <- c(as.vector(coef(fit1)),0.002446059)
> fit2 <- optim(theta, loglik,  clotting, gr = NULL, hessian = TRUE,
>        control = list(fnscale = -1))
>
> # Then I got the following error message:
> Error in optim(theta, loglik, clotting, gr = NULL, hessian = TRUE, control = 
> list(fnscale = -1)) :
>  non-finite finite-difference value [3]
>

If you use trace(loglik, tracer=quote(print(theta))) to trace the inputs to 
loglik() you will find that it is being called with negative values of theta[3] 
to get finite differences.   One fix is to reparametrize and use the log scale 
rather than the scale as a parameter.

    -thomas


Thomas Lumley
Professor of Biostatistics
University of Washington, Seattle


NOTICE:  This e-mail message, including any attachments and appended messages, 
is for the sole use of the intended recipients and may contain confidential and 
legally privileged information.
If you are not the intended recipient, any review, dissemination, distribution, 
copying, storage or other use of all or any portion of this message is strictly 
prohibited.
If you received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender by 
reply e-mail and delete this message in its entirety.

______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Reply via email to