[R] Memory problems with mice

[Michael Dewey]

Dear Jennifer

See inline below

On 27/10/2015 12:20, Lorenz, Jennifer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I am trying to perform a multiple imputation with mice on a dataset of about 13000 observations and 178 variables. I can start an "empty" imputation ("imp_start <- mice(data, maxit=0)"), but after a few minutes R stops with the following error message:
> Error: cannot allocate vector of size 2.0 Gb
> In addition: Warning messages:
> 1: In col(value) :
>    Reached total allocation of 8078Mb: see help(memory.size)
> 2: In col(value) :
>    Reached total allocation of 8078Mb: see help(memory.size)
> 3: In unique.default(x) :
>    Reached total allocation of 8078Mb: see help(memory.size)
> 4: In unique.default(x) :
>    Reached total allocation of 8078Mb: see help(memory.size)
> 5: In unique.default(x) :
>    Reached total allocation of 8078Mb: see help(memory.size)
> 6: In unique.default(x) :
>    Reached total allocation of 8078Mb: see help(memory.size)
>
> I am using R (with R Studio) on Windows 7, my computer has a total of 8 GB RAM.
> Following advice I found on the internet, I installed the newest R-version (64-bit) and tried the following commands:

Well the internet is wonderful, but ...

> memory.size(max = F)
> memory.limit(size=NA)
>

... R documentation is even more wonderful.
?memory.limit
says that (size = NA) reports the limit but does not set it.

> But I still get the same error. Now I am wondering, if my dataset is really to large for mice or R? Or is there any other setting I could use to increase memory size for R? I would really appreciate if anyone who is familiar with this problem would share their insights...
>
> Thanks,
> Jen
>
>
> ---
> Jennifer Lorenz, M.A.
> Georg-August-Universit�t G�ttingen
> Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakult�t
> Institut f�r Erziehungswissenschaft
> Lehrstuhl Schulp�dagogik / Empirische Schulforschung
>
> e-mail: jlorenz at uni-goettingen.de<mailto:jlorenz at uni-goettingen.de>
> phone: 0551-39-21411
> adress: Waldweg 26, 37073 G�ttingen
> room: 8.106
>
>
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>
>
>
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-- 
Michael
http://www.dewey.myzen.co.uk/home.html