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Purpose:

The first time you run JudgeIt on a new set of elections, you should use PRELIM to estimate LAMBDA and SIGMA, since these parameter estimates are required for many subsequent analyses. Do this after defining YVOTE, XVARS, YVOTE2 (for estimating LAMBDA), and (optionally) XVARS2. PRELIM estimates LAMBDA and SIGMA. If you attempt analyses before you use PRELIM to set the values of LAMBDA and SIGMA, the analyses will be skipped. This is actually convenient, since you can set up your file with all the commands you eventually intend to run without worrying about them interfering with your preliminary analysis. During the early runs, when you are estimating LAMBDA and SIGMA, other commands will be ignored; after you are finished with this preliminary estimation, and have edited the PRELIM commands in your text to set the values for LAMBDA and SIGMA, the analysis will run.