[R] gam (mgcv) problem: Error in while (mean(ldxx/(ldxx + ldss)) > 0.4) { :, missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed

[Simon Wood]

Hi Andrew,

Could you send me a bit more information (off list, as this is likely to 
get into obscure details), please?
In particular can you let me know the mgcv and R version numbers, the 
server operating system and, if possible, what BLAS it has installed?

best,
Simon

On 16/10/12 07:32, Andrew Crane-Droesch wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm running into a problem with GAM (in the MGCV package).  When I try
> to estimate the model, I get the following error message:
>
>      1> fit <-
>      gam(ndvi~s(rain)+s(temp)+s(rainl1)+s(rainl2)+s(rainxY)+s(rainl1xY)+s(rainl2xY)+s(tempxY),
>      data=dsub, weights=wvec)
>      Error in while (mean(ldxx/(ldxx + ldss)) > 0.4) { :
>         missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed
>
> Using traceback, I get the following output (which I don't understand)
>
> 1> traceback()
> 7: initial.sp(w * X, S, off)
> 6: initial.spg(G$X, G$y, G$w, G$family, G$S, G$off, G$L, G$lsp0)
> 5: estimate.gam(G, method, optimizer, control, in.out, scale, gamma,
>          ...)
> 4: gam(ndvi ~ s(rain) + s(temp) + s(rainl1) + s(rainl2) + s(rainxY) +
>          s(rainl1xY) + s(rainl2xY) + s(tempxY), data = dsub, weights = wvec)
> 3: eval.with.vis(expr, envir, enclos)
> 2: eval.with.vis(ei, envir)
> 1: source("/tmp/RTmpFile-UYYVRr.r", echo = TRUE, print.eval = TRUE,
>          max.deparse.length = 5e+05, local = TRUE)
>
> I've got a ton of data, and I'm doing this all via ssh into a relatively
> fast server.
> 1> dim(dsub)
> [1] 181705     42
>
> By way of context, I'm using climate data to predict NDVI, and using the
> residuals of that prediction for a separate estimation.
>
> I'd appreciate if someone could help me understand what is going on and
> how to fix it.  It seems like something is wrong with the optimizer, but
> I'm still learning the mechanics of these techniques and don't fully
> understand what is going wrong.
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew
>
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>
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