hi,

i'll try to help you, i send a mail about this subject last week... and
i did not have any response...

I'm using gam from package mgcv. 

1)
How to interpret the significance of smooth terms is hard for me to
understand perfectly : 
using UBRE, you fix df. p-value are estimated by chi-sq distribution 
using GCV, the best df are estimated by GAM. (that's what i want) and
p-values 
are estimated by an F distribution But in that case they said "use at
your own risk" in ?summary.gam

so you can also look at the chi.sq : but i don't know how to choose a
criterion like for p-values... for me, chi.sq show the best predictor in
a model, but it's hard to reject one with it.

so as far as i m concerned, i use GCV methods, and fix a 5% on the null
hypothesis (pvalue) to select significant predictor. after, i look at my
smooth, and if the parametrization look fine to me, i validate.

generaly, for p-values smaller than 0.001, you can be confident. over
0.001, you have to check. 

2)
for difference between package gam and mgcv, i sent a mail about this
one year ago, here's the response :

"
- package gam is based very closely on the GAM approach presented in 
Hastie and Tibshirani's  "Generalized Additive Models" book. Estimation
is 
by back-fitting and model selection is based on step-wise regression 
methods based on approximate distributional results. A particular
strength 
of this approach is that local regression smoothers (`lo()' terms) can
be 
included in GAM models.

- gam in package mgcv represents GAMs using penalized regression
splines. 
Estimation is by direct penalized likelihood maximization with 
integrated smoothness estimation via GCV or related criteria (there is 
also an alternative `gamm' function based on a mixed model approach). 
Strengths of the this approach are that s() terms can be functions of
more 
than one variable and that tensor product smooths are available via te()
terms - these are useful when different degrees of smoothness are 
appropriate relative to different arguments of a smooth.

(...)

Basically, if you want integrated smoothness selection, an underlying 
parametric representation, or want smooth interactions in your models 
then mgcv is probably worth a try (but I would say that). If you want to
use local regression smoothers and/or prefer the stepwise selection 
approach then package gam is for you. 
"

i think the difference of p-values between :gam and :mgcv, is because
you don't have same number of step iteration. mgcv : gam choose the
number of step and with gam : gam you have to choose it..

hope it helps and someone gives us more details...

Yves


Le mer 28/09/2005 à 15:30, Denis Chabot a écrit :

> I only got one reply to my message:
> 
> > No, this won't work.  The problem is the usual one with model  
> > selection: the p-value is calculated as if the df had been fixed,  
> > when really it was estimated.
> >
> > It is likely to be quite hard to get an honest p-value out of  
> > something that does adaptive smoothing.
> >
> >     -thomas
> 
> I do not understand this: it seems that a lot of people chose df=4  
> for no particular reason, but p-levels are correct. If instead I  
> choose df=8 because a previous model has estimated this to be an  
> optimal df, P-levels are no good because df are estimated?
> 
> Furthermore, shouldn't packages gam and mgcv give similar results  
> when the same data and df are used? I tried this:
> 
> library(gam)
> data(kyphosis)
> kyp1 <- gam(Kyphosis ~ s(Age, 4), family=binomial, data=kyphosis)
> kyp2 <- gam(Kyphosis ~ s(Number, 4), family=binomial, data=kyphosis)
> kyp3 <- gam(Kyphosis ~ s(Start, 4), family=binomial, data=kyphosis)
> anova.gam(kyp1)
> anova.gam(kyp2)
> anova.gam(kyp3)
> 
> detach(package:gam)
> library(mgcv)
> kyp4 <- gam(Kyphosis ~ s(Age, k=4, fx=T),  family=binomial,  
> data=kyphosis)
> kyp5 <- gam(Kyphosis ~ s(Number, k=4, fx=T),  family=binomial,  
> data=kyphosis)
> kyp6 <- gam(Kyphosis ~ s(Start, k=4, fx=T),  family=binomial,  
> data=kyphosis)
> anova.gam(kyp4)
> anova.gam(kyp5)
> anova.gam(kyp6)
> 
> 
> P levels for these models, by pair
> 
> kyp1 vs kyp4: p= 0.083 and 0.068 respectively (not too bad)
> kyp2 vs kyp5: p= 0.445 and 0.03 (wow!)
> kyp3 vs kyp6: p= 0.053 and 0.008 (wow again)
> 
> Also if you plot all these you find that the mgcv plots are smoother  
> than the gam plots, even the same df are used all the time.
> 
> I am really confused now!
> 
> Denis
> 
> Début du message réexpédié :
> 
> >> De : Denis Chabot <chabotd@globetrotter.net>
> >> Date : 26 septembre 2005 12:25:04 HAE
> >> À : r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch
> >> Objet : p-level in packages mgcv and gam
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I am fairly new to GAM and started using package mgcv. I like the  
> >> fact that optimal smoothing is automatically used (i.e. df are not  
> >> determined a priori but calculated by the gam procedure).
> >>
> >> But the mgcv manual warns that p-level for the smooth can be  
> >> underestimated when df are estimated by the model. Most of the  
> >> time my p-levels are so small that even doubling them would not  
> >> result in a value close to the P=0.05 threshold, but I have one  
> >> case with P=0.033.
> >>
> >> I thought, probably naively, that running a second model with  
> >> fixed df, using the value of df found in the first model. I could  
> >> not achieve this with mgcv: its gam function does not seem to  
> >> accept fractional values of df (in my case 8.377).
> >>
> >> So I used the gam package and fixed df to 8.377. The P-value I  
> >> obtained was slightly larger than with mgcv (0.03655 instead of  
> >> 0.03328), but it is still < 0.05.
> >>
> >> Was this a correct way to get around the "underestimated P-level"?
> >>
> >> Furthermore, although the gam.check function of the mgcv package  
> >> suggests to me that the gaussian family (and identity link) are  
> >> adequate for my data, I must say the instructions in R help for  
> >> "family" and in Hastie, T. and Tibshirani, R. (1990) Generalized  
> >> Additive Models are too technical for me. If someone knows a  
> >> reference that explains how to choose model and link, i.e. what  
> >> tests to run on your data before choosing, I would really  
> >> appreciate it.
> >>
> >> Thanks in advance,
> >>
> >> Denis Chabot
> >>
> >
> 
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