step.gam                package:mgcv                R Documentation

Alternatives to step.gam

Description:

     There is no 'step.gam' in package 'mgcv'. The 'mgcv' default for
     model selection is to use MSE/KL-distance criteria such as GCV or
     UBRE/AIC. Since the smoothness estimation part of model selection
     is done in this way it is logically most consistent to perform
     model selection on the basis of such criteria: i.e. to decide
     which terms to include or omit by looking at changes in
     GCV/UBRE/AIC score. 

     To facilitate fully automatic model selection the package includes
     2 classes of smoothers ('"cs"' and '"ts"': see 's') which can be
     penalized to zero for sufficiently high smoothing parameter
     estimates: use of such smooths provides an effective alternative
     to step-wise model selection. The example below shows an example
     of the application of this approach, where selection is a fully
     integrated part of model estimation.

Author(s):

     Simon N. Wood simon.wood@r-project.org

Examples:

     ## an example of GCV based model selection as
     ## an alternative to stepwise selection
     library(mgcv)
     set.seed(0);n <- 400
     dat <- gamSim(1,n=n,scale=2)
     dat$x4 <- runif(n, 0, 1)
     dat$x5 <- runif(n, 0, 1)
     attach(dat)
     ## Note the increased gamma parameter below to favour
     ## slightly smoother models...
     b<-gam(y~s(x0,bs="ts")+s(x1,bs="ts")+s(x2,bs="ts")+
        s(x3,bs="ts")+s(x4,bs="ts")+s(x5,bs="ts"),gamma=1.4)
     summary(b)
     plot(b,pages=1)
     detach(dat);rm(dat)

