"problem creating switch function for getParam" error with custom distributions / functions(?)

[pcoll...@berkeley.edu]

I'm a brand new user, checking out NIMBLE for some crude hidden population models. My first attempt at compiling a model with a couple of 'custom' distributions (hypergeometric, discrete uniform) and one custom function (log binomial coefficient calculator) has run up against an error which I cannot interpret. Upon compilation, sometime during the later subfunction calls, the program fails with error "problem creating switch function for getParam...". See attached R markdown for the code used and the exact text of the error.

Any pointers on what the problem is? Thanks in advance.

[Perry de Valpine]

Thanks for the reproducible example.

Oops, it turns out there is a problem when parameters of a user-defined distribution are named "lower" or "upper".  If you rename those parameters, it works.  I'll file a github issue so we can fix that.

In addition, dbin (aliased by dbinom) is an example of a distribution defined by BUGS with different default parameter order from R.  So you'll want:

S1_ct[v,t] ~ dbinom(size = Q[v,t], prob = p_S1)

There remains a problem with some initial values yielding NaNs from your nlchoose function (I suspect n-k+1 <= 0), which I leave to you to resolve.

Perry

On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 7:17 PM, <pcoll...@berkeley.edu> wrote:

I'm a brand new user, checking out NIMBLE for some crude hidden population models. My first attempt at compiling a model with a couple of 'custom' distributions (hypergeometric, discrete uniform) and one custom function (log binomial coefficient calculator) has run up against an error which I cannot interpret. Upon compilation, sometime during the later subfunction calls, the program fails with error "problem creating switch function for getParam...". See attached R markdown for the code used and the exact text of the error.

Any pointers on what the problem is? Thanks in advance.

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[pcoll...@berkeley.edu]

Thanks much Perry. I somehow sussed out that the 'lower' 'upper' nomenclature was the problem as well. I'll tinker around to see if I can fix the NaN issues.

   

On Thursday, November 9, 2017 at 11:20:09 AM UTC-8, pdevalpine wrote:

Thanks for the reproducible example.

Oops, it turns out there is a problem when parameters of a user-defined distribution are named "lower" or "upper".  If you rename those parameters, it works.  I'll file a github issue so we can fix that.

In addition, dbin (aliased by dbinom) is an example of a distribution defined by BUGS with different default parameter order from R.  So you'll want:

S1_ct[v,t] ~ dbinom(size = Q[v,t], prob = p_S1)

There remains a problem with some initial values yielding NaNs from your nlchoose function (I suspect n-k+1 <= 0), which I leave to you to resolve.

Perry

On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 7:17 PM, <pcoll...@berkeley.edu> wrote:

I'm a brand new user, checking out NIMBLE for some crude hidden population models. My first attempt at compiling a model with a couple of 'custom' distributions (hypergeometric, discrete uniform) and one custom function (log binomial coefficient calculator) has run up against an error which I cannot interpret. Upon compilation, sometime during the later subfunction calls, the program fails with error "problem creating switch function for getParam...". See attached R markdown for the code used and the exact text of the error.

Any pointers on what the problem is? Thanks in advance.

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[pcoll...@berkeley.edu]

I think I've fixed the nlchoose function to deal with log(-#) errors (updated markdown files attached), but there's another cryptic error upon compilation. This time the error occurs within the 

for (i in whichUnits) {
      ans[[i]] <- project$compileModel(units[[i]], control = control,
        showCompilerOutput = showCompilerOutput)
      if (names(units)[i] != "")
        names(ans)[i] <- names(units)[i]
    }

chunk of the compileNimble() call, and seems to be a problem with taking the maximum of two S4 typed variables, but again what's going on is pretty opaque to me, so help would be greatly appreciated.

Error in max(a1nDim, a2nDim) : invalid 'type' (S4) of argument

[Perry de Valpine]

It looks like the problem is that nlchoose needs a returnType(double(0)) statement.

I'll think about how we could trap that and provide a more useful message.

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[pcoll...@berkeley.edu]

Great! That's done it.