Fitting Non-Linear Models in R with mgcv

Gavin L Simpson and Noam Ross (with Dave Miller and Eric Pedersen in absentia)

Download/Install materials from bit.ly/mgcv2018

OR just open RStudio and run:

install.packages("usethis")
usethis::use_course("bit.ly/mgcv-zip")

Good morning!

Logistics

  • where is power?
  • what's the wifi?
  • where is the coffee?
  • where is the bathroom?
  • what if there is a fire?

Who are we?

Gavin Simpson

  • (Palaeo)ecologist interested in community dynamics & environmental change
  • (Palaeo)limnologist interested in environmental change
  • Self-taught not-statistician
  • Ecological stats software (vegan plus some palaeo stuff)
  • To me most things are a model I can (will!) fit with mgcv

Noam Ross

  • Disease and theoretical ecologist at EcoHealth Alliance
  • Disease spillover dynamics
  • Host/pathogen macroecology
  • Stochastic and network population processes
  • Fitting time-series data to mechanistic models
  • R package development editor with rOpenSci
  • mgcvfor time and species traits, and as alternative to black-box machine learning.

Who are you?

What is the structure of the day?

Timing

  • 8am to 5pm
  • Morning session: 8am-12pm
  • Aternoon session: 1pm-5pm

(Approximate) schedule

Time Thing
0800-0815 Intro
0815-0945 Generalized Additive Models
0945-1000 Coffee
1000-1045 Model checking
1045-1130 Model selection
1130-1200 Beyond the exponential family
1200-1300 Lunch
1300-1700 Extended examples/demos

Foraging

Wifi