[R] nls() syntax

Duncan Murdoch murdoch@dunc@n @end|ng |rom gm@||@com
Sat Dec 12 03:25:11 CET 2020


On 11/12/2020 6:50 p.m., Rolf Turner wrote:
> 
> 
> I want to fit a model y = x/(x-a) where the value of a depends
> on the level of a factor z.  I cannot figure out an appropriate
> syntax for nls().  The "parameter" a (to be estimated) should be a
> vector of length equal to the number of levels of z.
> 
> I tried:
> 
> strt <- rep(3,length(levels(z))
> names(strt=levels(z)
> fit <- nls(y ~ x/(x - a[z]),start=strt,data=xxx)
> 
> but of course got an error:
> 
>> Error in nls(y ~ x/(x - a[z]), start = strt, data = xxx) :
>>    parameters without starting value in 'data': a
> 
> I keep thinking that there is something obvious that I should
> be doing, but I can't work out what it is.
> 
> Does there *exist* an appropriate syntax for doing what I want
> to do?  Can anyone enlighten me?  The data set "xxx" is given
> in dput() form at the end of this message.


I don't know of anything easy here.  I think you need to do some tricky 
stuff with formulas to get what you want.  For example,

pred <- function(x, z, ...) {
   a <- unlist(list(...))
   names(a) <- levels(xxx$z)
   x/(x-a[z])
}
strt <- rep(3,length(levels(xxx$z)))
names(strt) <- levels(xxx$z)
fla <- y ~ pred(x, z)
fla[[3]] <- as.call(c(as.list(fla[[3]]), lapply(levels(xxx$z), as.name)))
fit <- nls(fla,start=strt,data=xxx)

That line starting fla[[3]] is the ugly part:  it takes the simple 
formula y ~ pred(x, z) and changes it to y ~ pred(x, z, a1, a2, a3, a4, 
a5).  As far as I know, nls() can't handle vector paramters, it only 
deals with scalars, so this passes them each as a separate argument.

Maybe rlang or one of the other packages like that has code to make this 
less obscure.



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