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DESCRIPTION:

Objects of class "varcomp" that represent the estimation of a variance components model.

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GENERATION:

This class of objects is returned from the varcomp function.

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METHODS:

The "varcomp" class of objects has methods for the following generic functions: coef, print, plot, summary.

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INHERITANCE:

The class "varcomp" inherits from "lm".

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STRUCTURE:

The following components must be included in a legitimate varcomp object.

variances:

vector of variance components.

coefficients:

the coefficients for the fixed effects in the model.

beta:

vector of estimated random variables.

residuals:

the residuals for the model.

info:

vector of information on the likelihood.

assign.fixed:

the list of assignments of coefficients to the fixed terms in the model. The names of this list are the names of the terms. The ith element of the list is the vector saying which coefficients correspond to the ith term. It may be of length 0 if there were no estimable effects for the term.

assign.random:

list of assignments for the beta component. This is analogous to assign.fixed.

fitted.values:

the fitted values using only the fixed effects (all random components are treated as zero).

contrasts:

a list of the contrast matrices used for the fixed effects that are factors.

terms:

an object of mode expression and class term summarizing the formula. This is used by various methods, but typically not of direct relevance to users.

method:

character string(s) stating the method of estimation used.

call:

an image of the call that produced the object, but with the arguments all named and with the actual formula included as the formula argument.

There are also the following components if maximum likelihood or REML are performed: