NONMEM Users Guide Part I - Users Basic Guide
Preface to 3rd Edition
NONMEM Users Guide Part I - Users Basic Guide
Preface to 3rd Edition
The appearance of this 3rd
edition of the Users Basic Guide coincides with the
appearance of NONMEM 77 Version III Level 1. The 2nd edition
was written before NONMEM 77 was developed, and its
appearance coincided with that of Version II of the earlier
IBM-specific NONMEM. Therefore, much has happened to the
NONMEM program since the 2nd edition which should be
documented in the Users Basic Guide, and this 3rd edition
achieves this goal. In addition, with this edition there are
many changes to the document which substantially improve its
readability and clarity. However, the organization and
examples used in the 3rd edition are little changed from
those used in the 2nd edition.
The IBM-specific NONMEM has not
been distributed since it was superceded in 1984 by NONMEM
77, a program that can be used with any machine with an ANSI
FORTRAN 77 compiler. There is not as much opportunity today
as there was earlier to confuse these two programs, and so
there is not as much necessity when referring to the current
program to follow the name ’NONMEM’ with the
term ’77’. Consequently, with the appearance of
Version III of NONMEM 77 it will henceforth be called simply
NONMEM, and this practice is reflected in this 3rd edition
of the Users Basic Guide.
The new features in Version III
are:
|
1. |
|
The problem summary has been
streamlined. |
|
2. |
|
NONMEM can provide some help in
obtaining initial estimates for
,
and
. |
|
3. |
|
The appearance of any given task
specification record is optional. |
|
4. |
|
Tables can be either printed or
stored in (machine-readable) files. |
|
5. |
|
A new task can be performed
which simulates data according to the user-specified model.
This data can be analyzed by performing the estimation,
covariance, tables and scatterplot tasks. |
|
6. |
|
The objective function can be
partly defined by user-code. |
Features 1-4 are described in
this Guide. Features 5-6 are described in the 2nd edition of
NONMEM Users Guide, Part II, whose appearance also coincides
with the appearance of Version III.
It is advisable that a new
NONMEM user read this Guide and try running and
understanding some or all of the examples found herein. The
user can check that he has correctly installed the program
by comparing the output he obtains with the output displayed
in this document. There might be some rather small
discrepancies in so far as the computations are somewhat
machine dependent. All the output in this Guide is obtained
using a SUN model 2, equipped with a SKY floating-point
coprocessor and running SUN UNIX 4.2 Release 3.4. All the
output is obtained using Double Precision NONMEM; see
section A.1.
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