Dear all, There appears to be a bug in how constrOptim handles ... arguments that are suppose to be passed to optim, according to the documentation. This means you can't get the hessian to be returned, for example (so this is a real problem, and not just a question of mistaken documentation).
Looking at the code, it appears that a call to the user-defined f includes the ..., when the ... should only be passed to the optim call. I get around it by putting a dummy 'hessian=TRUE' argument in my f function, but this is not how the function should work. I show the relevant problem in the code, give an example, and also give my sessionInfo() call below. Thanks, Elizabeth ##Copy of the relevant segment of the code of constrOptim and where I think the problem might be: for (i in 1L:outer.iterations) { obj.old <- obj r.old <- r theta.old <- theta fun <- function(theta, ...) { ##this one's okay R(theta, theta.old, ...)##this one's okay } gradient <- function(theta, ...) {##this one's okay dR(theta, theta.old, ...)##this one's okay } a <- optim(theta.old, fun, gradient, control = control, method = method, ...)##this one's okay r <- a$value if (is.finite(r) && is.finite(r.old) && abs(r - r.old)/(outer.eps + abs(r - r.old)) < outer.eps) break theta <- a$par obj <- f(theta, ...)##this one's NOT okay if (obj > obj.old) break } ###Here is an example modified from the examples of the help page of constrOptim: > fr <- function(x) { ## Rosenbrock Banana function + x1 <- x[1] + x2 <- x[2] + 100 * (x2 - x1 * x1)^2 + (1 - x1)^2 + } > grr <- function(x) { ## Gradient of 'fr' + x1 <- x[1] + x2 <- x[2] + c(-400 * x1 * (x2 - x1 * x1) - 2 * (1 - x1), + 200 * (x2 - x1 * x1)) + } > constrOptim(c(-1.2,0.9), fr, grr, ui=rbind(c(-1,0),c(0,-1)), ci=c(-1,-1)) $par [1] 0.9999761 0.9999522 $value [1] 5.708626e-10 $counts function gradient 6 1 $convergence [1] 0 $message NULL $outer.iterations [1] 14 $barrier.value [1] -0.0001999198 > constrOptim(c(-1.2,0.9), fr, grr, ui=rbind(c(-1,0),c(0,-1)), ci=c(-1,-1),hessian=TRUE) Error in f(theta, ...) : unused argument(s) (hessian = TRUE) #add in a dummy argument to my f function > fr <- function(x,hessian=TRUE) { ## Rosenbrock Banana function + x1 <- x[1] + x2 <- x[2] + 100 * (x2 - x1 * x1)^2 + (1 - x1)^2 + } > constrOptim(c(-1.2,0.9), fr, grr, ui=rbind(c(-1,0),c(0,-1)), ci=c(-1,-1),hessian=TRUE) $par [1] 0.9999761 0.9999522 $value [1] 5.708626e-10 $counts function gradient 6 1 $convergence [1] 0 $message NULL $hessian [,1] [,2] [1,] 801.9599 -399.9905 [2,] -399.9905 199.9952 $outer.iterations [1] 14 $barrier.value [1] -0.0001999198 ###My Session info > sessionInfo() R version 2.10.0 (2009-10-26) x86_64-apple-darwin9.8.0 locale: [1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base other attached packages: [1] GEOquery_2.10.0 RCurl_1.2-1 bitops_1.0-4.1 Biobase_2.5.8 biomaRt_2.1.0 projectManager_1.0 lattice_0.17-26 RColorBrewer_1.0-2 [9] XML_2.6-0 loaded via a namespace (and not attached): [1] grid_2.10.0 tools_2.10.0 -- Elizabeth Purdom Assistant Professor Department of Statistics UC, Berkeley Evans Hall, Rm 433 epur...@stat.berkeley.edu (510) 642-6154 (office) (510) 642-7892 (fax) ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel