Generalized Additive Models

Now in widespread use, generalized additive models (GAMs) have evolved into a standard statistical methodology of considerable flexibility. While Hastie and Tibshirani's outstanding 1990 research monograph on GAMs is largely responsible for this, there has been a long-standing need for an accessible introductory treatment of the subject that also emphasizes recent penalized regression spline approaches to GAMs and the mixed model extensions of these models. Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction with R imparts a thorough understanding of the theory and practical applications of GAMs and related advanced models, enabling informed use of these very flexible tools. The author bases his approach on a framework of penalized regression splines, and builds a well-grounded foundation through motivating chapters on linear and generalized linear models. While firmly focused on the practical aspects of GAMs, discussions include fairly full explanations of the theory underlying the methods. Use of the freely available R software helps explain the theory and illustrates the practicalities of linear, generalized linear, and generalized additive models, as well as their mixed effect extensions. The treatment is rich with practical examples, and it includes an entire chapter on the analysis of real data sets using R and the author's add-on package mgcv. Each chapter includes exercises, for which complete solutions are provided in an appendix. Concise, comprehensive, and essentially self-contained, Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction with R prepares readers with the practical skills and the theoretical background needed to use and understand GAMs and to move on to other GAM-related methods and models, such as SS-ANOVA, P-splines, backfitting and Bayesian approaches to smoothing and additive modelling.

This book describes an array of power tools for data analysis that are based on nonparametric regression and smoothing techniques. These methods relax the linear assumption of many standard models and allow analysts to uncover structure in the data that might otherwise have been missed. While McCullagh and Nelder's Generalized Linear Models shows how to extend the usual linear methodology to cover analysis of a range of data types, Generalized Additive Models enhances this methodology even further by incorporating the flexibility of nonparametric regression. Clear prose, exercises in each chapter, and case studies enhance this popular text.

The first edition of this book has established itself as one of the leading references on generalized additive models (GAMs), and the only book on the topic to be introductory in nature with a wealth of practical examples and software implementation. It is self-contained, providing the necessary background in linear models, linear mixed models, and generalized linear models (GLMs), before presenting a balanced treatment of the theory and applications of GAMs and related models. The author bases his approach on a framework of penalized regression splines, and while firmly focused on the practical aspects of GAMs, discussions include fairly full explanations of the theory underlying the methods. Use of R software helps explain the theory and illustrates the practical application of the methodology. Each chapter contains an extensive set of exercises, with solutions in an appendix or in the book’s R data package gamair, to enable use as a course text or for self-study. Simon N. Wood is a professor of Statistical Science at the University of Bristol, UK, and author of the R package mgcv.

This book presents a greatly enlarged statistical framework compared to generalized linear models (GLMs) with which to approach regression modelling. Comprising of about half-a-dozen major classes of statistical models, and fortified with necessary infrastructure to make the models more fully operable, the framework allows analyses based on many semi-traditional applied statistics models to be performed as a coherent whole. Since their advent in 1972, GLMs have unified important distributions under a single umbrella with enormous implications. However, GLMs are not flexible enough to cope with the demands of practical data analysis. And data-driven GLMs, in the form of generalized additive models (GAMs), are also largely confined to the exponential family. The methodology here and accompanying software (the extensive VGAM R package) are directed at these limitations and are described comprehensively for the first time in one volume. This book treats distributions and classical models as generalized regression models, and the result is a much broader application base for GLMs and GAMs. The book can be used in senior undergraduate or first-year postgraduate courses on GLMs or categorical data analysis and as a methodology resource for VGAM users. In the second part of the book, the R package VGAM allows readers to grasp immediately applications of the methodology. R code is integrated in the text, and datasets are used throughout. Potential applications include ecology, finance, biostatistics, and social sciences. The methodological contribution of this book stands alone and does not require use of the VGAM package.

This book is about making machine learning models and their decisions interpretable. After exploring the concepts of interpretability, you will learn about simple, interpretable models such as decision trees, decision rules and linear regression. Later chapters focus on general model-agnostic methods for interpreting black box models like feature importance and accumulated local effects and explaining individual predictions with Shapley values and LIME. All interpretation methods are explained in depth and discussed critically. How do they work under the hood? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How can their outputs be interpreted? This book will enable you to select and correctly apply the interpretation method that is most suitable for your machine learning project.

The success of the first edition of Generalized Linear Models led to the updated Second Edition, which continues to provide a definitive unified, treatment of methods for the analysis of diverse types of data. Today, it remains popular for its clarity, richness of content and direct relevance to agricultural, biological, health, engineering, and ot

This book is about learning from data using the Generalized Additive Models for Location, Scale and Shape (GAMLSS). GAMLSS extends the Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) and Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) to accommodate large complex datasets, which are increasingly prevalent. In particular, the GAMLSS statistical framework enables flexible regression and smoothing models to be fitted to the data. The GAMLSS model assumes that the response variable has any parametric (continuous, discrete or mixed) distribution which might be heavy- or light-tailed, and positively or negatively skewed. In addition, all the parameters of the distribution (location, scale, shape) can be modelled as linear or smooth functions of explanatory variables. Key Features: Provides a broad overview of flexible regression and smoothing techniques to learn from data whilst also focusing on the practical application of methodology using GAMLSS software in R. Includes a comprehensive collection of real data examples, which reflect the range of problems addressed by GAMLSS models and provide a practical illustration of the process of using flexible GAMLSS models for statistical learning. R code integrated into the text for ease of understanding and replication. Supplemented by a website with code, data and extra materials. This book aims to help readers understand how to learn from data encountered in many fields. It will be useful for practitioners and researchers who wish to understand and use the GAMLSS models to learn from data and also for students who wish to learn GAMLSS through practical examples.

Now in widespread use, generalized additive models (GAMs) have evolved into a standard statistical methodology of considerable flexibility. While Hastie and Tibshirani's outstanding 1990 research monograph on GAMs is largely responsible for this, there has been a long-standing need for an accessible introductory treatment of the subject that also e