Dear all As far as I could trace, looking at the function C function numeric_deriv, this unwanted behavior comes from the inner most loop in, at the very end of the function, for(i = 0, start = 0; i < LENGTH(theta); i++) { for(j = 0; j < LENGTH(VECTOR_ELT(pars, i)); j++, start += LENGTH(ans)) { SEXP ans_del; double origPar, xx, delta;
origPar = REAL(VECTOR_ELT(pars, i))[j]; xx = fabs(origPar); delta = (xx == 0) ? eps : xx*eps; REAL(VECTOR_ELT(pars, i))[j] += rDir[i] * delta; PROTECT(ans_del = eval(expr, rho)); if(!isReal(ans_del)) ans_del = coerceVector(ans_del, REALSXP); UNPROTECT(1); for(k = 0; k < LENGTH(ans); k++) { if (!R_FINITE(REAL(ans_del)[k])) *error(_("Missing value or an infinity produced when evaluating the model"));* REAL(gradient)[start + k] = rDir[i] * (REAL(ans_del)[k] - REAL(ans)[k])/delta; } *REAL(VECTOR_ELT(pars, i))[j] = origPar;* } } Maybe a (naive?) fix is change the if statement in the inner most loop to if (!R_FINITE(REAL(ans_del)[k])) { * REAL(VECTOR_ELT(pars, i))[j] = origPar; error(_("Missing value or an infinity produced when evaluating the model"));*} Regards, Raimundo Neto Em ter., 16 de jun. de 2020 às 11:31, <luke-tier...@uiowa.edu> escreveu: > Thanks; definitely a bug. I've submitted it to the bug tracker at > > https://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17831 > > Best, > > luke > > On Mon, 15 Jun 2020, Raimundo Neto wrote: > > > Dear R developers, > > > > I've run into a weird behavior of the numericDeriv function (from the > stats > > package) which I also posted on StackOverflow (question has same title as > > this email, except for the version of R). > > > > Running the code bellow we can see that the numericDeriv function gives > an > > error as the derivative of x^a wrt a is x^a * log(x) and log is not > defined > > for negative numbers. However, seems like the function changes the value > of > > env1$a from 3 to 3.000000044703483581543. If x is a vector of positive > > values numericDeriv function completes the task without errors and > env1$a > > remains unchanged as expected. > > > > This happened to me running R 4.0.1 on Ubuntu 20.04 and also to another > > StackOverflow user using running the same version of R on Windows 10. I > > wonder, is this an intended behavior of the function or really a bug? > > > > options(digits=22) > > env1 = new.env() > > env1$x = rnorm(10) > > env1$a = 3 > > eval(quote(x^a), env1) > > numericDeriv(quote(x^a), "a", env1) > > eval(quote(x^a), env1) > > env1$a > > > > Thank you! > > Raimundo Neto > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > > > -- > Luke Tierney > Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences > University of Iowa Phone: 319-335-3386 > Department of Statistics and Fax: 319-335-3017 > Actuarial Science > 241 Schaeffer Hall email: luke-tier...@uiowa.edu > Iowa City, IA 52242 WWW: http://www.stat.uiowa.edu > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel