ABSTRACT
This chapter covers use of the generalized additive modelling functions provided by
R package mgcv: the design of these functions is based largely on Hastie (1993), although to facilitate smoothing parameter estimation, their details have been mod-
ified. It is also well worth being aware of other packages available for GAM type
modelling in R. At time of writing, two other packages stand out: gss, written by Chong Gu and gam, written by Trevor Hastie. There is not space in this book to cover
these in detail, but section 5.6 offers brief introductions to both. Packages assist
and gamlss are also available at cran.r-project.org, and the vgam package
is also worth seeking out.
