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Release 19: new features

1. Highlights

●   1 new directive

●   20 new procedures

●   ability to use any available font, and to specify line styles by name in PEN statements

●   empirical-distribution-function goodness-of-fit tests (EDFTEST)

●   power calculations, sample-size estimation and identification of outliers in REML analyses (VPOWER, VSAMPLESIZE, VSOM)

●   exploration of canonical relationships between terms in experimental designs (ACANONICAL, ACDISPLAY, ACKEEP)

●   orthogonal partial least squares regression (OPLS)

●   Matern models in Kriging

2. What’s new

2.1 Directives

DFONT defines the default font for high-resolution graphics.

2.2 Procedures

ABOXCOX estimates the power λ in a Box-Cox transformation, that maximizes the partial log-likelihood in ANOVA.

ACANONICAL determines the orthogonal decomposition of the sample space for a design, using an analysis of the canonical relationships between the projectors derived from two or more model formulae.

ACDISPLAY provides further output from an analysis by ACANONICAL.

ACKEEP saves information from an analysis by ACANONICAL.

BACKTRANSFORM calculates back-transformed means with approximate standard errors and confidence intervals.

DBCOMMAND runs an SQL command on an ODBC database.

DKEY adds a key to a graph.

DSTTEST plots power and significance for t-tests, including equivalence tests.

EDFTEST performs empirical-distribution-function goodness-of-fit tests.

FACGETLABELS obtains the labels for a factor if it has been defined with labels, or constructs labels from its levels otherwise.

MCOMPARISON performs pairwise multiple comparison tests within a table of means.

OPLS performs orthogonal partial least squares regression.

SPNTEST calculates the sample size for a Poisson test.

TXSPLIT splits a text into individual texts, at positions on each line marked by separator character(s).

VCRITICAL uses a parametric bootstrap to estimate critical values for a fixed term in a REML analysis.

VPOWER uses a parametric bootstrap to estimate the power (probability of detection) for terms in a REML analysis.

VRCHECK checks effects of a random term in a REML analysis.

VSAMPLESIZE estimates the replication to detect a fixed term or contrast in a REML analysis, using parametric bootstrap.

VSOM analyses a simple REML variance components model for outliers using a variance shift outlier model.

VUVCOVARIANCE forms the unit-by-unit variance-covariance matrix for specified variance components in a REML model.

2.2 Functions

None.

3. What’s changed

Most of the changes are compatible with Release 18, the previous release. There are a few commands, however, where new options or parameters have been inserted into the existing lists. These may cause problems in statements where option or parameter names have been omitted or abbreviated (see Section 1.7.1 of Part 1 of the Guide to the Genstat Command Language for details). To avoid any difficulty, the name of the option/parameter after the new option/parameter should be given explicitly, and not abbreviated to fewer than four characters.

Any command, where changes in Release 19 may cause incompatibilities in existing programs, is marked in Sections 3.1 and 3.2 by the symbol . The full details are given in Section 3.4.

3.1 Directives

DEVICE no longer has a PAGESIZE parameter. This previously set the page size for HPGL graphics output, but that is now obsolete.

DSTART now allows you to specify the pen to use to plot the title.

FCA now has a vcovariance setting for its METHOD option, which is a synonym of variancecovariance. (This has been introduced for compatibility with other commands, which use vcovariance rather than variancecovariance.)

GET now defines the ENVIRONMENT and SPECIAL pointers so that their labels can be specified in either upper or lower case, or any mixture.

KRIGE can now use the Matern model.

PCP now has a vcovariance setting for its METHOD option, which is a synonym of variancecovariance. (This has been introduced for compatibility with other commands, which use vcovariance rather than variancecovariance.)

PEN now allows you to specify fonts and line styles by name.

PROCEDURE can restore the settings to control what happens after a fault, or when an unset dummy is specified; see SET.

RKEEP now specifies the OMODEL and PMODEL pointers so that their labels can be specified in either upper or lower case, or any mixture.

SET now allows you to control what happens after a fault, or when an unset dummy is specified as the setting of an option or parameter that expects another type of data structure.

SETRELATE can now check whether the two sets are distinct.

TXPOSITION now allows the SUBTEXT to contain several strings, when the TEXT contains a single string. You can thus search the same string, to see which of several strings might occur there.

VKEEP can now save the identifier of the y-variate that was analysed. (Note: it already defines the MODELS pointer so that its labels can be specified in either upper or lower case, or any mixture.)

3.2 Procedures

AGRAPH and AUGRAPH now use the identifier of the y-variate as the default for YTITLE.

AREPMEASURES now has a MAXCYCLE option to control the number of iterations for estimating missing values.

CHECKARGUMENT can now check trees and save structures.

DPROBABILITY can now do likelihood-ratio goodness-of-fit tests (using the EDFTEST procedure). The test probabilities can be saved by the new PROBABILITIES parameter.

DTABLE now allows the BAR parameter to be set to a pointer, containing either two scalars or two tables, to define the upper and lower positions of the bar(s).

DVARIOGRAM can now plot the Matern model.

DYPOLAR now has a KEYDESCRIPTION option.

HGANALYSE, HGDISPLAY, HGFTEST, HGKEEP and HGRTEST have an additional setting automatic for the DMETHOD option, which first tries the more efficient Cholski method, and switches to the LRV method if that fails.

IMPORT can now convert Unicode characters in Excel xlsx files into usable representations.

KCROSSVALIDATION can now use the Matern model.

MVARIOGRAM can now fit the Matern model.

PEAKFINDER now has a SCREEN option.

PLS: the default of the SEED option is now 0.

RSEARCH now allows you to retain marginal terms in the FREE model during all-subset regression, so that you can assess models in which they are excluded.

SVGLM can now use Taylor series approximations to estimate variances with any of the distributions.

TRELLIS now allows you to specify subticks on the axes and to display schematic boxplots.

VEQUATE can now transfer values from texts and pointers.

VABLOCKDESIGN, VAROWCOLUMNDESIGN and VASERIES had a CONSTRAINTS option that was identical in its first 4 characters to their CONSTANT option (contrary to the standard protocols). This has been renamed to VCONSTRAINTS. They also now have a SPATIALFACTOR to allow you to specify a factor to use to define the term required for a two-dimensional power-distance model.

VALINEBYTESTER has removed its CONSTRAINTS option as this is unnecessary. (The constraints settings from VABLOCKDESIGN and VAROWCOLUMNDESIGN are transferred automatically when the random model is redefined inside VALINEBYTESTER by VFMODEL.) Also, the MVINCLUDE option is now used only when the SAVE parameter is unset. (When it is set, the units to include in the analysis can be determined from the save structure.)

VGRAPH now uses the identifier of the y-variate as the default for YTITLE.

VRMETA now allows you to construct models where variance components are shared by several experiments.

VRPERMTEST can now save the test statistics and their probabilities, and specify a title for the graphs.

3.3 Functions

None.

3.4 Incompatibilities

AREPMEASURES procedure option MAXCYCLE inserted before LSDLEVEL.
DEVICE directive parameter SIZEPAGE has been deleted.
KCROSSVALIDATION procedure parameter SMOOTHNESS inserted before PHI.
KRIGE directive parameter SMOOTHNESS inserted before PHI.
PLS procedure option SEED now has a default of 0 (previously was the value specified by the NGROUPS option).
SET directive unset dummies are now always faulted. Previously some were ignored, but this was not consistent. You can now set option UNSETDUMMY=ignore to prevent these faults.
VKEEP directive option YVARIATE inserted before EXIT.
VABLOCKDESIGN procedure CONSTRAINTS option renamed to VCONSTRAINTS.
VALINEBYTESTER procedure CONSTRAINTS option has been removed.
VAROWCOLUMNDESIGN procedure CONSTRAINTS option renamed to VCONSTRAINTS.
VASERIES procedure CONSTRAINTS option renamed to VCONSTRAINTS.
Updated on June 19, 2019

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