error message

[cazlo]

I receive the following error message: "Unable to allocate 105000 k worksheet cells. Worksheet size unchanged. (INIT)." When I try to increase the size of my worksheet to model. n=550,000 and I am trying to run MCMC estimations on a model with 12 'normal' variables and more than 30 1st level interactions, in a five level cross-classification, logistic model. I'm wondering if this is an issue with MLWin or my PC? The memory of the PC is 2Gb.

[ChrisCharlton]

You may be setting the worksheet size too high as the value that you enter is in terms of thousands of cells. You can get a rough estimate of what to set the worksheet size to from the following FAQ page:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmm/software/s ... tsize.html

[cazlo]

Hi Chris, Thanks for your response, but I don't think it's that. I have tried gradually increasing the number of k cells, when I do 100,000 or below, I get the error message that there aren't enough cells available to complete the estimations, but when I try increasing them, I get the aforementioned error message.

[ChrisCharlton]

In that case there are a few options that might help:

1) Remove variables that are not in the model from the worksheet. This will mean that there is more available space to store the MCMC chains.

2) Resize the worksheet straight after opening MLwiN. This will increase the likelihood that it can find a larger contiguous memory block.

3) Set thinning in the MCMC estimation options. This will store only every n iterations, reducing the amount of worksheet space needed.

If none of these work then you may have to work on a sub sample of your data.

[cazlo]

Hi Chris, Many thanks for your response, I will try your suggestions.