Generally speaking, the first step of debugging errors is to read log file or console output since most packages in this project actually relies on other programs. For example,

  • rstan runs Stan
  • rjags runs JAGS
  • R2OpenBUGS runs OpenBUGS which is the open-source version of BUGS

stan has very extensive documentation and JAGS also have many active users in the academia. On the other hand, BUGS is, in my opinion, a little stale and not actively maintained with the community. My resolution to BUGS related questions is usually tribal knowledge of professors and TAs.

Below, I document some specific questions that I’ve seen. Please contribute to this doc so that others can be benefited as well.

rstan and Stan

rjags and JAGS

R2OpenBUGS and OpenBUGS

The following sources are very helpful: