Genetic correlations that doesn't make sense

Hi, I'm trying to estimate a multivariate ACE model. I started by checking a correlated factors solution (umxACEv), but there are some correlations that just can't be real (e.g., 2.02).
| | rA1|rA2 |rA3 |rA4 |rC1 |rC2 |rC3 |rC4 | rE1|rE2 |rE3 |rE4 |
|:----------|-----:|:----|:-----|:---|:---|:---|:---|:---|-----:|:-----|:-----|:---|
|x | 1.00| | | | | | | | 1.00| | | |
|y | -0.40|1 | | | | | | | 0.17|1 | | |
|z | 0.03|0.38 |1 | | | | | | -0.03|-0.03 |1 | |
|w | 0.15|2.02 |-0.21 |1 | | | | | 0.06|-0.41 |-0.07 |1 |
Standardized variance-based models may yield negative variances...
Warning message:
In sqrt(I * C) : NaNs produced
So I checked what are the computed correlations in a cholesky model (umxACE), and there are different correlations, in this case they are all in bounds, but still a correlation of 0.98 between two completely different variables, that were measured in two different ages, seem to be really weird. Furthermore, there are a lot of estimates that are drastically different both in magnitude (C correlations) and in direction, between the two models.
| | rA1|rA2 |rA3 |rA4 | rC1|rC2 |rC3 |rC4 |rE1 |rE2 |rE3 |rE4 |
|:----------|-----:|:----|:----|:---|-----:|:-----|:----|:---|:----|:-----|:-----|:---|
|x | 1.00| | | | 1.00| | | |1 | | | |
|y | -0.39|1 | | | -0.11|1 | | |0.16 |1 | | |
|z | -0.07|0.27 |1 | | -0.97|-0.15 |1 | |. |-0.02 |1 | |
|w | -0.20|0.98 |0.25 |1 | -1.00|0.17 |0.95 |1 |0.08 |-0.33 |-0.14 |1 |
I'd appreciate any thoughts of why such values can occur.
Thanks!
can't tell without the data
please share the MZ and DZ correlation tables.
I'm guessing this is some kind of oddity from small-n data
`umxSummarizeTwinData()` will generate the needed tables to say more.
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In reply to can't tell without the data by tbates
This seems the case indeed
This is the correlation table from umxSummarizeTwinData().
|Var | Mean| SD|rMZ (324) |rDZ (635) |
|:---------|-----:|----:|:-----------|:-----------|
|x | 0.01| 0.62|0.67 (0.06) |0.34 (0.06) |
|y | -0.02| 0.59|0.4 (0.08) |0.25 (0.06) |
|z | 3.02| 0.71|0.7 (0.03) |0.32 (0.04) |
|w | 11.48| 8.30|0.36 (0.16) |0.23 (0.14) |
However, w comes from a different wave than the x and y. So when checking the overlap for w and y for example (the most out of bound correlation), there are only 15-17 families overlapping in MZ twins, so I'm guessing this is the explanation for the out of bounds correlations..
Thanks!
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parameterization
Based on the above, my guess is that the out-of-bounds correlations are a result of the _A_, _C_, and _E_ matrices not being positive-definite under the parameterization (direct-symmetric?) being used. Since those matrices are not proper covariance matrices, their standardized forms won't be proper correlation matrices. There was a recent thread about that specifically.
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