___________________________________________________________________
 |                                                                 |
 |                    MINIMUM VALUE OF OBJ. FUNCTION               |
 |_________________________________________________________________|

 MEANING: The value of the objective function
 CONTEXT: NONMEM output

 DISCUSSION:
 The NONMEM OBJECTIVE FUNCTION is a  goodness  of  fit  statistic;  the
 lower the value, the better the fit.  Negative values are possible and
 have  no  special  significance.   Under  certain   assumptions,   the
 (default) objective function value is minus twice the log likelihood.

 A page with the title MINIMUM VALUE OF OBJECTIVE FUNCTION" is  printed
 as part of every NONMEM output, as in this example.

 ******       MINIMUM VALUE OF OBJECTIVE FUNCTION        ***********
 *****************         11.570     ******************************

 If the Estimation Step was NOT run, then  the  value  printed  is  the
 value  of the objective function using the initial parameter estimates
 specified for the problem.

 If the Estimation Step WAS run, then the value printed is the value of
 the objective function with the final parameter estimates.

 Differences in the objective function of fits  of  the  same  data  to
 hierarchical  models can often be used to test approximately the plau-
 sibility of the smaller (fewer free parameters) model  by  referencing
 the  difference  to  a chi-square distribution with degrees of freedom
 equal to the difference in the number of free model parameters between
 models (hypothesis tests).

REFERENCES: Guide I Section C.3.5.1
REFERENCES: Guide V Section 5.5


  
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