Since the default initial value is not good enough. You should choose one based on your experience or luck. I choose start=rep(1,5) since there are parameters in the model.
> polr(Species~Sepal.Length+Sepal.Width+Petal.Length+Petal.Width,iris, > start=rep(1,6), method = "logistic") Call: polr(formula = Species ~ Sepal.Length + Sepal.Width + Petal.Length + Petal.Width, data = iris, start = rep(1, 6), method = "logistic") Coefficients: Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width -2.471271 -6.675614 9.432753 18.266280 Intercepts: setosa|versicolor versicolor|virginica 5.513223 42.598774 Residual Deviance: 11.89856 AIC: 23.89856 -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/likelyhood-maximization-problem-with-polr-tp2528818p2529174.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.