Hold off on blowing the dust off the C books. You can program you MCMC code
in Matlab (Mathworks) and they have a compiler that will convert you Matlab
code into C and run it, yielding substantial savings in computing time. I
agree WinBUGS is great for getting a quick look at the data.
Gene Pennello
FDA Division of Biostatistics, HFZ-542
Rockville MD 20850
phone: 301-827-0010
fax: 301-443-8559
email: [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Baker (CMIS, St Lucia) [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 12:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: LinBUGS or BUGS for Linux
On Wed, 20 Aug 2003, David Paul wrote:
>Let's face it, programming MCMC methods from scratch in
>C/C++ is the best approach for time-intensive problems.
>At my company, we have been able to achieve speed increases
>of 25 - 50 fold (versus WinBUGS) simply by first hard coding everything
>and then having a numerical analyst optimize the code.
>
>-david paul
Hi david and others
I agree. If you want speed then perhaps swapping operating systems rather
than programming it, may not help much. Coding it yourself is best, fastest
etc BUT for simply having a quick look at data even for complex models
WinBUGS is great! (not too mention less error prone).
If the problem fits (and a lot of them do) you can still use Classic BUGS
(0.6) for linux. For batch jobs and simulation studies it seems to work
fine. Sorry: I'm not a fan of the DOS/Windows prompt even if there is
supposed to be a way of batching WinBUGS now ;-(
A linux version of WinBUGS would be great but I'd imagine, given most people
use Windows, it probably really isn't warranted. Better dust off the old C
books I guess ....
Cheers
Peter
PS: Re wine
WinBUGS won't work in recent Wine (ie anything younger than a couple of
years!) It used to work (mostly) but somehow Blackbox support got broken a
while ago. Someone (Martin Maechler I think ) logged the problem with Wine
developers but it hasn't been fixed.
--
Dr Peter Baker, Statistician (Bioinformatics/Genetics),
CSIRO Mathematical & Information Sciences, Queensland Bioscience Precinct
306 Carmody Road, St Lucia Qld 4067. Australia.
Email: <[log in to unmask]>
WWW: http://www.cmis.csiro.au/Peter.Baker/
Phone:+61 7 3214 2210 Fax:+61 7 3214 2900
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For help with crashes and error messages, first mail [log in to unmask]
To mail the BUGS list, mail to [log in to unmask]
Before mailing, please check the archive at www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/bugs.html
Please do not mail attachments to the list.
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