Hi,
I'm trying to calculate the value of the variable, dp, below, in the argument to the integral of dnorm(x-dp) * pnorm(x)^(m-1). This corresponds to the estimate of the sensitivity of an observer in an m-alternative forced choice experiment, given the probability of a correct response, Pc, a Gaussian assumption for the noise and no bias. The function that I wrote below gives me an error:
Error in f(x, ...) : recursive default argument reference
The problem seems to be at the statement using uniroot, because the furntion est.dp works fine outside of the main function. I've been using R for awhile but there are still many nuances about the scoping and the use of environments that I'm weak on and would like to understand better. I would appreciate any suggestions or solutions that anyone might offer for fixing my error. Thank you.
dprime.mAFC <- function(Pc, m) { est.dp <- function(dp, Pc = Pc, m = m) {
pr <- function(x, dpt = dp, m0 = m) { dnorm(x - dpt) * pnorm(x)^(m0 - 1) }
Pc - integrate(pr, lower = -Inf, upper = Inf, dpt = dp, m0 = m)$value }
dp.res <- uniroot(est.dp, interval = c(0,5), Pc = Pc, m = m) dp.res$root }
You've got several problems here
* recursive argument defaults: these are unnecessary but result in the particular error message you are seeing (e.g., in the def of est.dp, the default value for the argument 'm' is the value of the argument 'm' itself -- default values for arguments are interpreted in the frame of the function itself)
* the argument m=m you supply to uniroot() is being interpreted as specifying the 'maxiter' argument to uniroot()
I think you can fix it by changing the 'm' argument of function est.dp to be named 'm0', and specifying 'm0' in the call to uniroot. (but I can't tell for sure because you didn't supply a working example -- when I just guess at values to pass in I get numerical errors.)
Also, it would be best to remove the incorrect recursive default arguments for the functions est.dp and pr.
-- Tony Plate
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