"newbie" forum

Posted on
No user picture. andrew_demetriou Joined: 06/02/2021
Hello all,

Newcomer to OpenMx here, just getting started and working through the 'Simplified Manual for Beginners'. I'm wondering if it makes sense to have a newbie forum thread, where we can ask basic questions, discuss the exercises in the manual / examples in the documentation, and link to materials that explain specific basic concepts to each other as we learn.

e.g. I'm working through an example designed to instruct on how to read the output of model summaries, and I'm finding that model fit doesn't appear to be affected much when I deliberately mis-specify the model. I'm likely doing something wrong in the model specification, or mis-reading something in the output.

I suppose I could ask these questions in the general thread, but I'm wondering if those of us that are new might more likely to ask, and answer, the 'stupid' questions in a newbie forum.

Thoughts?

Replied on Tue, 06/22/2021 - 13:46
Picture of user. AdminRobK Joined: 01/24/2014

e.g. I'm working through an example designed to instruct on how to read the output of model summaries, and I'm finding that model fit doesn't appear to be affected much when I deliberately mis-specify the model. I'm likely doing something wrong in the model specification, or mis-reading something in the output.

Could you post the code that isn't doing what you expect?

Newcomer to OpenMx here, just getting started and working through the 'Simplified Manual for Beginners'.

I should advise you: that document is 10 years old. It would have been written for OpenMx v1.3 and R v2.x.

Replied on Wed, 06/23/2021 - 05:17
No user picture. andrew_demetriou Joined: 06/02/2021

In reply to by AdminRobK

thanks for the response! I actually ended up figuring it out in the end. This post was more about the viability / usefulness of starting a newbie thread to discuss beginner's questions. Does it make sense to do so?

Also, is anyone working on updating the document? Any way that I can assist in this? I found that beginner's document and exercises to be useful as an introduction.

Replied on Wed, 06/23/2021 - 10:06
Picture of user. AdminRobK Joined: 01/24/2014

In reply to by andrew_demetriou

This post was more about the viability / usefulness of starting a newbie thread to discuss beginner's questions. Does it make sense to do so?

Yes, I understand. I should have mentioned in my post that I raised your suggestion of a newbie forum to the other OpenMx developers via our mailing list. I'm inclined to agree with tbates that the general forum is a suitable place for beginner questions. It looks like tbates created a new forum for discussion of the documentation.

Also, is anyone working on updating the document? Any way that I can assist in this? I found that beginner's document and exercises to be useful as an introduction.

I doubt anyone is updating that document. TBH, I was not even aware of its existence until, prompted by your post, I looked it up yesterday. But, if you found it useful, and are willing to update it, I say go for it!

Replied on Wed, 06/23/2021 - 06:56
Picture of user. tbates Joined: 07/31/2009

Most newbie/getting started questions fit the general forum pretty well, but a forum for discussing the manual/documentation exercises is a great idea!!

Created it [here](https://openmx.ssri.psu.edu/forum/50), so feel free to make the first post :-)

Enhancing the documentation would welcome, I'm sure. There was a suggestion to redo/update that in a new format, which is worth discussing here?

You might find the tutorials and examples at the [umx tutorial site](https://tbates.github.io) useful. Let me know if there's anything you want added or that modified/clarified.