> MORE GENERAL OPTIM ISSUES > > I'm considering creating a package 'optimMLE' that would automate > some of this and package it with common 'methods' that would assume that > sum(fn(...)) was either a log(likelihood) or the negative of a > log(likelihood), etc. However, before I do, I need to make more > progress on some of my other commitments, review RSiteSearch("optim", > "fun") to make sure I'm not duplicating something that already exists, > etc. If anyone is interested in collaborating on this, please contact > me off-line. > > Hope this helps. > Spencer
Thanks for your tips on using `optim()'. I believe `optim' is a reasonable good implementation of numerical optimization techniques such as quasi-Newton BFGS or conjugate gradients. Maybe methods using modern line searches or trust regions can follow someday. Everybody applying `optim' should be aware that it is a *Local Optimization* (LO) approach. What you describe appears to be a step towards *Global Optimization* (GO) in R. And indeed more and more requests in to the R-help list are about `optim' as a tool for global optimization, not always being fully aware of the differences. I am wondering whether it would be more useful to provide one or two global optimization approaches to the R community. And as this is an active research area, there are many and with different advantages and drawbacks. I would like to propose IPOPT as one of he newer and more advanced methods for global optimization. This powerful software package is open source and available through the COIN-OR initiative and its Web pages: http://www.coin-or.org/Ipopt/documentation/ ``Ipopt (Interior Point OPTimizer, pronounced I-P-Opt) is a software package for large-scale nonlinear optimization. Ipopt is written in C++ and is released as open source code under the Common Public License (CPL). It is available from the COIN-OR initiative. The code has been written by Carl Laird (Carnegie Mellon University) and Andreas Wachter (IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center), who is the COIN project leader for Ipopt.'' PERHAPS the COIN project would agree for IPOPT to be integrated into the open source project R as a package. For testing it right now there is an AMPL-based interface to IPOPT at the NEOS solver: http://neos.mcs.anl.gov/neos/solvers/nco:Ipopt/AMPL.html There may be other rewarding projects in the COIN-OR initiative, such as `SYMPHONY' for solving mixed-integer linear programs (MILP, stronger than `glpk' and `lp-solve'), or the BONMIN open source *non-linear* mixed integer programming (MINLP) solver. I could imagine R to be a good platform for integrating some of these algorithms. ------------ Hans W. Borchers Control and Optimization Group ABB Corporate Research Germany [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________ 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.