Confirmation of the meaning of the init arguments

Operating System: OSX & Linux
Interface Version: cmdstan v2.19.1
Compiler/Toolkit: clang

The cmdstan user’s guide states:

Initialization is only applied to parameters defined in the parameters block. Any initial values supplied for transformed parameters or generated quantities are ig- nored.

init= Initialization method:

• real number x > 0 initializes randomly between [-x, x]; • 0 initializes to 0;
• non-number interpreted as a data file

Validvalues: All (Defaults to 2)

Recently someone suggested that if a data file is specified, the values in there are the initial values used, not a range from which an initial value is selected. Is that correct?

Thanks,
Rob

If an init file is provided then each parameter name is queried in that file and if found then the value in the file is used to initialize that parameter. If the parameter name is not found then the quoted random initialization procedure is used.

Thank you! That explains what is meant by the manual.