Hi David,

You are right in that Bray-Curtis is not suitable for my dataset, and that
my variables are very different. Given your suggestions, I am struggling
with how to transform or standardize my data given that they vary so much.
Additionally, looking at the dist() package I am not sure which distance
measure would be most appropriate. Euclidean seems to most widely used but
I'm not sure if it is appropriate for myself (there much more help for
ecology data than toxicology). Given a sample of my data below ( total of
287 obs. of  29 variables) can you suggest a starting point?

 SODIUM K CL HCO3 ANION CA P GLUCOSE  CHOLEST        GGT    GLDH CK AST
PROTEIN ALBUMIN GLOBULIN A_G UA BA CORTICO T3 T4 THYROID  145 3.3 102 24 22
2.9 2.45 9.8 5.7 3 3 678 5 34 15 19 0.79 180 6 70.97 1.31 12.77 0.102376
146 3.2 102 21 26 2.89 2.68 11.1 6.78 3 4 1290 9 36 18 18 1 170 13 79.1 3.51
18.78 0.186751  147 2.5 103 22 25 2.96 2.59 10 5.78 3 6 1582 11 35 17 18
0.94 272 10 65.84 1.84 15.5 0.118602  148 2.5 101 21 29 2.91 2.91 10.6 5.83
3 3 1479 8 35 17 18 0.94 317 8 74.9 2.59 20.68 0.125389
Thank you!
Elizabeth


On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 7:50 AM, David Carlson <dcarl...@tamu.edu> wrote:

> Since you pass your entire data.frame to metaMDS(), your first error
> probably comes from the fact that you have included ID as one of the
> variables. You should look at the results of
>
> str(dat)
>
> You can drop cases with missing values using
>
> > dat2 <- na.omit(dat)
> > metaMDS(dat2[,-1])
>
> would run the analysis on all but the first column (ID) with all the cases
> containing complete data. But that assumes that sex and exposure are not
> factors.
>
> Or you could use one of the distance functions in dist() which adjust for
> missing values. However dist() does not have an option to use Bray-Curtis
> (the default in metaMDS()). Bray-Curtis is designed for comparing species
> counts or proportions so it is not clear that it is an appropriate
> dissimilarity measure for your data. Further, your data seem contain a
> mixture of measurement scales and/or magnitudes so some variable
> standardization or transformations are probably necessary before you can
> get
> any useful results from MDS.
>
> -------------------------------------
> David L Carlson
> Associate Professor of Anthropology
> Texas A&M University
> College Station, TX 77840-4352
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org]
> On
> Behalf Of Elizabeth Beck
> Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 3:39 PM
> To: r-help@r-project.org
> Subject: [R] NMDS with missing data?
>
> Hi,
> I'm trying to run NMDS (non-metric multidimensional scaling) with R vegan
> (metaMDS) but I have a few NAs in my data set. I've tried to run it 2 ways.
>
> The first way with my entire data set which includes variables such as ID,
> sex, exposure, treatment, sodium, potassium, chloride....
>
> mydata.mds<-metaMDS(dat)
>
> I get the following error:
>
>  in if (any(autotransform, noshare > 0, wascores) && any(comm < 0)) { :
>   missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed
> In addition: Warning messages:
> 1: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
> 2: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
> 3: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
> 4: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
> 5: In Ops.factor(left, right) : < not meaningful for factors
>
> The second way with only those last biochemical variables (29 in total).
>
> mydata.mds<-metaMDS(measurements)
>
> I get this error:
>
> Error in if (any(autotransform, noshare > 0, wascores) && any(comm < 0)) {
> :
>   missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed
>
> My go to "na.rm=TRUE" does nothing. Any ideas on how to account for NAs and
> if so which of the above options I should be using?
> Thanks!
> Elizabeth
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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>
>

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