Sverre: As your reproducible example shows, the problem is that the string "y1:y2" is not an acceptable term of the formula. One way round this is simply convert the non-string part of the formula to a string, pase it with your term, and then reconvert it to a formula:
update(my.lm,formula(paste(".~.-", my.object))) There may be a more elegant way via substitute(), but I think this works. Cheers, Bert On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Sverre Stausland <john...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm extracting the name of the term in a regression model that > dropterm specifies as the least significant one, and I'm assigning > this name to an object. However, when I use update(), it ignores this > object. Is there a way I can make it not ignore it? A reproducible > example is below: > >> lm(x1~1+y1*y2+y3+y4,data=anscombe)->my.lm >> rownames(dropterm(my.lm,test="F",sort=TRUE))[1]->my.object >> my.object > [1] "y1:y2" >> update(my.lm,.~.-my.object) > > Call: > lm(formula = x1 ~ y1 + y2 + y3 + y4 + y1:y2, data = anscombe) > > Coefficients: > (Intercept) y1 y2 y3 y4 > -8.95635 1.11420 0.61921 0.76762 0.21237 > y1:y2 > -0.04056 > >> update(my.lm,.~.-y1:y2) > > Call: > lm(formula = x1 ~ y1 + y2 + y3 + y4, data = anscombe) > > Coefficients: > (Intercept) y1 y2 y3 y4 > -6.6409 0.7618 0.3836 0.7759 0.1640 > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > -- "Men by nature long to get on to the ultimate truths, and will often be impatient with elementary studies or fight shy of them. If it were possible to reach the ultimate truths without the elementary studies usually prefixed to them, these would not be preparatory studies but superfluous diversions." -- Maimonides (1135-1204) Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics ______________________________________________ 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.