[R] help in lme

[cbotts1@cox.net]

To anyone who can help,

  I have two stupid questions, and one fairly intelligent question

Stupid question (1):   is there an R function to calculate a factorial of a number?    That is...is there a function g(.) such that g(3) = 6, g(4) = 24, g(6) = 720, etc?

Stupid question (2):  how do you extract the estimated covariance matrix of the random effects in an lme object?


Intelligent question (1)  I keep on trying to fit a linear mixed model in R using 'lme(y~fxd.dsgn, data = data.mtrx, ~rnd.dsgn|group)' where fxd.dsgn and rnd.dsgn are the fixed and random design matrices, respectively.   The function won't work, though.   It keeps telling me that it can't find the object 'rnd.dsgn'.    What's the matter here?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.