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DistanceDevelopment / Distance

Simple distance sampling analysis
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Vignette and blog entry about MCDS.exe extension #170

Closed lenthomas closed 1 year ago

lenthomas commented 1 year ago

I have made a draft vignette highlighting the functionality of the new MCDS.exe extension -- here. Please feel free to edit as you see fit, and add your names to the author list if you wish. I will be away for the next couple of weeks, and I anticipate (hope!) the release will be ready before I get back, so feel free to go ahead without me. Note that I have not linked the new vignette to the list on the distanceexamples main page; it will also need recompiling once the new release is out so the version numbers are correct. I tried to add code to remove any MCDS.exe that is already there when it is compiled, so it gives the right messages at the top, but I'm not sure how successful I've been.

Below is some draft text that could be used as part of a web site blog entry and distance list announcement. Again, feel free to use/edit/etc as you see fit.

"The new release adds the ability to fit detection functions (CDS and MCDS) using the same optimizer used by Distance for Windows. This requires downloading a compiled file MCDS.exe into an R library directory, and is currently only supported under Windows operating systems. (There is experimental support for MacOS and Linux, and we hope to roll out full support in the future.) This new feature may be of use for those encountering difficulties fitting detection functions (e.g., convergence problems) and also those with inherently "difficult" distance sampling data - e.g., data with a spike in the detection function close to zero or overdispersion (many non-independent detections, such as is common in camera trap distance sampling). There are also circumstances with the MCDS.exe optimizer is faster than the R-based one, which may be of particular help when using a nonparametric bootstrap for variance estimation. A vignette giving examples and more information is available at on our DistanceExamples web page -- direct link here. If you encounter any difficulties in using this new enhancement, please let us know."

Feel free to close this issue when you feel these things are ready!

lenthomas commented 1 year ago

Just to note that @erex pointed out I did not follow the distill format for the vignette -- I'm happy to make some revisions there when I understand the process better - or feel free to do so yourself @LHMarshall if you already understand what to change.