nlme (version 3.1-86)

nlme: Nonlinear Mixed-Effects Models

Description

This generic function fits a nonlinear mixed-effects model in the formulation described in Lindstrom and Bates (1990) but allowing for nested random effects. The within-group errors are allowed to be correlated and/or have unequal variances.

Usage

nlme(model, data, fixed, random, groups, start, correlation, weights,
     subset, method, na.action, naPattern, control, verbose)

Value

an object of class nlme representing the nonlinear mixed-effects model fit. Generic functions such as print, plot and summary have methods to show the results of the fit. See nlmeObject 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.

References

The model formulation and computational methods are described in Lindstrom, M.J. and Bates, D.M. (1990). The variance-covariance parametrizations are described in Pinheiro, J.C. and Bates., D.M. (1996). The different correlation structures available for the correlation argument are described in Box, G.E.P., Jenkins, G.M., and Reinsel G.C. (1994), Littel, R.C., Milliken, G.A., Stroup, W.W., and Wolfinger, R.D. (1996), and Venables, W.N. and Ripley, B.D. (1997). The use of variance functions for linear and nonlinear mixed effects models is presented in detail in Davidian, M. and Giltinan, D.M. (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.

Littel, R.C., Milliken, G.A., Stroup, W.W., and Wolfinger, R.D. (1996) "SAS Systems for Mixed Models", SAS Institute.

Lindstrom, M.J. and Bates, D.M. (1990) "Nonlinear Mixed Effects Models for Repeated Measures Data", Biometrics, 46, 673-687.

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. (1997) "Modern Applied Statistics with S-plus", 2nd Edition, Springer-Verlag.

See Also

nlmeControl, nlme.nlsList, nlmeObject, nlsList, nlmeStruct, pdClasses, reStruct, varFunc, corClasses, varClasses

Examples

fm1 <- nlme(height ~ SSasymp(age, Asym, R0, lrc),
            data = Loblolly,
            fixed = Asym + R0 + lrc ~ 1,
            random = Asym ~ 1,
            start = c(Asym = 103, R0 = -8.5, lrc = -3.3))
summary(fm1)
fm2 <- update(fm1, random = pdDiag(Asym + lrc ~ 1))
summary(fm2)