Release brms 0.4.0 · paul-buerkner/brms

new features

implement the Wakanabe-Akaike Information Criterion (WAIC)
implement the ||-syntax for random effects allowing for the estimation of random effects standard deviations without the estimation of correlations.
allow to combine multiple grouping factors within one random effects argument using the interaction symbol ':'
generalize S3 method 'hypothesis' to be used with all parameter classes not just fixed effects. In addition, one-sided hypothesis testing is now possible.
introduce new family 'multigaussian' allowing for multivariate normal regression.
introduce new family 'bernoulli' for dichotomous response variables as a more efficient alternative to families 'binomial' or 'categorical' in this special case.

slightly change the internal structure of brms to reflect that rstan is finally on CRAN.
thoroughly check validity of the response variable before the data is passed to Stan.
prohibit variable names containing double underscores '__' to avoid naming conflicts.
allow function calls with several arguments (e.g. poly(x,3)) in the formula argument of function 'brm'.
always center random effects estimates returned by S3 method 'ranef' around zero.
prevent the use of customized covariance matrices for grouping factors with multiple random effects for now.
remove any experimental JAGS code from the package.

fix a bug in S3 method 'hypothesis' leading to an error when numbers with decimal places were used in the formulation of the hypotheses.
fix a bug in S3 method 'ranef' that caused an error for grouping factors with only one random effect.
fix a bug that could cause the fixed intercept to be wrongly estimated in the presence of multiple random intercepts.