Need better feedback to user when fitting fails to converge (Trac #924)

[butlerpd]

As of version 4.1, when the fitting fails to converge or hits a singularity etc, there are two responses. For sum/multiply (including P*S) models which are still in the old !SasView infrastructure a pop up with the traceback ... which is extremely confusing to the user and not helpful. For regular models that use the sasmodels infrastructure, a message is sent to the console stating that no values were returned from the fitter and a warning that fitting did not converge. Also the corner of the console line goes red. However the console line stays blank.

The first issue will get resolved when the sum/multiply get moved to the product model in the sasmodels infrastructure.

Two other things are being requested in order to make this useful:

• Send the message also to a popup
• To the "fitting did not converge" add some suggestions for what might help such as "you might want to check your starting parameters"

Migrated from http://trac.sasview.org/ticket/924

{
    "status": "new",
    "changetime": "2017-10-26T13:29:58",
    "_ts": "2017-10-26 13:29:58.783704+00:00",
    "description": "As of version 4.1, when the fitting fails to converge or hits a singularity etc, there are two responses.  For sum/multiply (including P*S) models which are still in the old !SasView infrastructure a pop up with the traceback ... which is extremely confusing to the user and not helpful. For regular models that use the sasmodels infrastructure, a message is sent to the console stating that no values were returned from the fitter and a warning that fitting did not converge.  Also the corner of the console line goes red.  However the console line stays blank.\n\nThe first issue will get resolved when the sum/multiply get moved to the product model in the sasmodels infrastructure. \n\nTwo other things are being requested in order to make this useful:\n* Send the message also to a popup\n* To the \"fitting did not converge\" add some suggestions for what might help such as \"you might want to check your starting parameters\"",
    "reporter": "butler",
    "cc": "",
    "resolution": "",
    "workpackage": "SasView Bug Fixing",
    "time": "2017-04-05T16:30:00",
    "component": "SasView",
    "summary": "Need better feedback to user when fitting fails to converge",
    "priority": "major",
    "keywords": "",
    "milestone": "SasView 5.0.0",
    "owner": "",
    "type": "defect"
}

[RichardHeenan]

Trac update at 2017/05/02 11:50:01: richardh commented:

See also #954 which give specific example of NaN values returned from Hayter_MSA

[butlerpd]

Trac update at 2017/10/26 13:29:58:

• butler changed description from:

As of version 4.1, when the fitting fails to converge or hits a singularity etc, there are two responses. For sum/multiply (including P*S) models which are still in the old SasView infrastructure a pop up with the traceback ... which is extremely confusing to the user and not helpful. For regular models that use the sasmodels infrastructure, a message is sent to the console stating that no values were returned from the fitter and a warning that fitting did not converge. Also the corner of the console line goes red. However the console line stays blank.

The first issue will get resolved when the sum/multiply get moved to the product model in the sasmodels infrastructure.

Two other things are being requested in order to make this useful:

• Send the message also to a popup
• To the "fitting did not converge" add some suggestions for what might help such as "you might want to check your starting parameters"

to:

As of version 4.1, when the fitting fails to converge or hits a singularity etc, there are two responses. For sum/multiply (including P*S) models which are still in the old !SasView infrastructure a pop up with the traceback ... which is extremely confusing to the user and not helpful. For regular models that use the sasmodels infrastructure, a message is sent to the console stating that no values were returned from the fitter and a warning that fitting did not converge. Also the corner of the console line goes red. However the console line stays blank.

The first issue will get resolved when the sum/multiply get moved to the product model in the sasmodels infrastructure.

Two other things are being requested in order to make this useful:

• Send the message also to a popup
• To the "fitting did not converge" add some suggestions for what might help such as "you might want to check your starting parameters"

• butler changed milestone from "SasView 4.2.0" to "SasView 5.0.0"

[rozyczko]

In 5.0, if the results come with a failure message, it gets shown in the log explorer.
If there are no results, a generic message "Fitting job failed." is shown, as we can't really figure out what happened.
I guess we could filter the bumps return codes a bit to figure out convergence and add sasview-specific string, but the backed failure message should, in essence, be sufficient.