This generic function fits a linear mixed-effects model in the formulation described in Laird and Ware (1982) but allowing for nested random effects. The within-group errors are allowed to be correlated and/or have unequal variances.
The methods lme.lmList and lme.groupedData
  are documented separately.
lme(fixed, data, random, correlation, weights, subset, method,
    na.action, control, contrasts = NULL, keep.data = TRUE)# S3 method for lme
update(object, fixed., …, evaluate = TRUE)
an object inheriting from class lme, representing
   a fitted linear mixed-effects model.
a two-sided linear formula object describing the
    fixed-effects part of the model, with the response on the left of a
    ~ operator and the terms, separated by + operators, on
    the right, an "lmList" object, or a
    "groupedData" object.
There is limited support for formulae such as resp ~ 1 and
    resp ~ 0, and less prior to version 3.1-112.
Changes to the fixed-effects formula -- see
   update.formula for details.
an optional data frame containing the variables named in
   fixed, random, correlation, weights, and
   subset.  By default the variables are taken from the
   environment from which lme is called.
optionally, any of the following: (i) a one-sided formula
   of the form ~ x1 + ... + xn | g1/.../gm, with x1 + ... + xn
   specifying the model for the random effects and g1/.../gm the
   grouping structure (m may be equal to 1, in which case no
   / is required). The random effects formula will be repeated
   for all levels of grouping, in the case of multiple levels of
   grouping; (ii) a list of one-sided formulas of the form
   ~ x1 + ... + xn | g, with possibly different random effects models
   for each grouping level. The order of nesting will be assumed the
   same as the order of the elements in the list; (iii) a one-sided
   formula of the form ~ x1 + ... + xn, or a pdMat object with
   a formula (i.e. a non-NULL value for formula(object)),
   or a list of such formulas or pdMat objects. In this case, the
   grouping structure formula will be derived from the data used to
   fit the linear mixed-effects model, which should inherit from class
   "groupedData"; (iv) a named list of formulas or pdMat
   objects as in (iii), with the grouping factors as names. The order of
   nesting will be assumed the same as the order of the order of the
   elements in the list; (v) an reStruct object. See the
   documentation on pdClasses for a description of the available
   pdMat classes. Defaults to a formula consisting of the right
   hand side of fixed.
an optional corStruct object describing the
   within-group correlation structure. See the documentation of
   corClasses for a description of the available corStruct
   classes. Defaults to NULL,
   corresponding to no within-group correlations.
an optional varFunc object or one-sided formula
   describing the within-group heteroscedasticity structure. If given as
   a formula, it is used as the argument to varFixed,
   corresponding to fixed variance weights. See the documentation on
   varClasses for a description of the available varFunc
   classes. Defaults to NULL, corresponding to homoscedastic
   within-group errors.
an optional expression indicating the subset of the rows of
   data that should be used in the fit. This can be a logical
   vector, or a numeric vector indicating which observation numbers are
   to be included, or a  character  vector of the row names to be
   included.  All observations are included by default.
a character string.  If "REML" the model is fit by
   maximizing the restricted log-likelihood.  If "ML" the
   log-likelihood is maximized.  Defaults to "REML".
a function that indicates what should happen when the
   data contain NAs.  The default action (na.fail) causes
   lme to print an error message and terminate if there are any
   incomplete observations.
a list of control values for the estimation algorithm to
   replace the default values returned by the function lmeControl.
   Defaults to an empty list.
an optional list. See the contrasts.arg
   of model.matrix.default.
logical: should the data argument (if supplied
   and a data frame) be saved as part of the model object?
some methods for this generic require additional arguments. None are used in this method.
If TRUE evaluate the new call else return the call.
An object of class "lme" representing the linear mixed-effects
  model fit. Generic functions such as print, plot and
  summary have methods to show the results of the fit. See
  lmeObject for the components of the fit. The functions
  resid, coef, fitted,
  fixed.effects, and
  random.effects  can be used to extract some of its components.
The computational methods follow the general framework of Lindstrom
  and Bates (1988). The model formulation is described in Laird and Ware
  (1982).  The variance-covariance parametrizations are described in
  Pinheiro and Bates (1996).  The different correlation structures
  available for the correlation argument are described in Box,
  Jenkins and Reinsel (1994), Littell et al (1996), and Venables and
  Ripley (2002). The use of variance functions for linear and nonlinear
  mixed effects models is presented in detail in Davidian and Giltinan
  (1995).
Box, G.E.P., Jenkins, G.M., and Reinsel G.C. (1994) "Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control", 3rd Edition, Holden--Day.
Davidian, M. and Giltinan, D.M. (1995) "Nonlinear Mixed Effects Models for Repeated Measurement Data", Chapman and Hall.
Laird, N.M. and Ware, J.H. (1982) "Random-Effects Models for Longitudinal Data", Biometrics, 38, 963--974.
Lindstrom, M.J. and Bates, D.M. (1988) "Newton-Raphson and EM Algorithms for Linear Mixed-Effects Models for Repeated-Measures Data", Journal of the American Statistical Association, 83, 1014--1022.
Littell, R.C., Milliken, G.A., Stroup, W.W., and Wolfinger, R.D. (1996) "SAS Systems for Mixed Models", SAS Institute.
Pinheiro, J.C. and Bates., D.M. (1996) "Unconstrained Parametrizations for Variance-Covariance Matrices", Statistics and Computing, 6, 289--296.
Pinheiro, J.C., and Bates, D.M. (2000) "Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-PLUS", Springer.
Venables, W.N. and Ripley, B.D. (2002) "Modern Applied Statistics with S", 4th Edition, Springer-Verlag.
corClasses,
  lme.lmList,
  lme.groupedData,
  lmeControl,
  lmeObject,
  lmeStruct,
  lmList,
  pdClasses,
  plot.lme,
  predict.lme,
  qqnorm.lme,
  residuals.lme,
  reStruct,
  simulate.lme,
  summary.lme,
  varClasses, 
  varFunc
# NOT RUN {
fm1 <- lme(distance ~ age, data = Orthodont) # random is ~ age
fm2 <- lme(distance ~ age + Sex, data = Orthodont, random = ~ 1)
summary(fm1)
summary(fm2)
# }
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