[Rsiena-help] Warnings "standard deviation is zero" in RSiena 1.1.-232 but not in RSiena 1.1-212

[Mark Manger]

Dear Tom, fellow RSiena users,

A small RSiena problem to resolve between World Cup matches:  I may have stumbled upon a bug/version conflict/problem of sorts with RSiena. I'm estimating model with two sets of one-mode networks.

The model can be estimated fine with R 2.15.3 and RSiena RSiena_1.1-212 on my Mac running Mavericks, including using the parallel package. I've built RSiena_1.1-212 from source when downgrading to identify the potential problem, but it definitely worked back in April last year with the binary as well.

In the meantime I've upgraded to R 3.1.0 and RSiena 1.1-232. Alas, the identical model now estimates fine until Phase 3 Iteration 1, then stops with the following warnings (any number from 16 to 25 warnings are generated):

Warning messages:
1: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
2: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
3: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
4: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
5: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
6: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
7: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
8: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
9: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
10: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
11: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
12: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
13: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
14: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
15: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero
16: In cor(z$sf[, i], scores[, i]) : the standard deviation is zero

etc.

Updating RSiena to 1.1.276 changes nothing, i.e. I still get the warnings. I also get this when estimating the model without any covariates and three network effects.

First, I wonder if this should lead me to question the results obtained with Siena 1.1-212. If not, I'd be fine just using the old version. The only advantage of course would be that with 1.1-276 I could use sienaRI, which looks extremely promising. Second, what do these warning tell me? The .out file looks fine to me.

—Mark


Mark S. Manger
Assistant Professor of Political Economy and Global Affairs
Munk School of Global Affairs & Department of Political Science | University of Toronto
Observatory Site | 315 Bloor Street West | Room 212
Toronto, ON   M5S 0A7
Phone: 416-946-8927 | Fax: 416-946-8877
mark.manger at utoronto.ca<mailto:mark.manger at utoronto.ca>
www.munkschool.utoronto.ca/mga<http://www.munkschool.utoronto.ca/mga>

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