Spline smoothing is an extension of polynomial regression. In spline smoothing, the set of considered time steps \(t \in {1, ..., n}\) is divided into \(k\) intervals \([t_0=1,t_1], [t_1+1, t_2], ..., [t_{k-1}+1, t_k=n]\), with \(k<n\) and \(t,k,n \in \mathbb N\) . The values \(t_0, t_1, ...,t_k\) are called knots. Then, in each interval a polynomial regression of the form

\[f_t = \beta_0+\beta_1t+...+\beta_pt^p\] is fitted, where typically \(p=3\), which is then called cubic spline. The regression is fitted by minimizing

\[\sum_{t=1}^n (x_t-f_t)^2+\lambda\int(f^{"}_t)^2dt\text{,}\]

where \(f_t\) is a cubic spline with a knot at each \(t\). This optimization results in a compromise between the fit and the degree of smoothness, which is controlled by \(\lambda \ge 0\). As \(\lambda \to 0\) (no smoothing), the smoothing spline converges to the interpolating spline, and as \(\lambda \to \infty\) (infinite smoothing), the roughness penalty becomes paramount and the estimate converges to a linear least squares estimate (Shumway and Stoffer 2011).

In R the spline smoothing is implemented in the smooth.spline() function, which fits a cubic smoothing spline to the supplied data. In this function the smoothing parameter is called spar, and is typically (but not necessarily) in \((0,1]\).

library(xts)
load(url("https://userpage.fu-berlin.de/soga/data/r-data/Earth_Surface_Temperature.RData"))

dt <- index(temp_global)
y <- coredata(temp_global)

plot(dt, y,
  type = "l",
  col = "gray", xlab = "", ylab = "",
  main = "Smoothing splines",
  cex.main = 0.85
)

lines(smooth.spline(dt, y, spar = 0.35),
  col = "red", type = "l"
)
lines(smooth.spline(dt, y, spar = 1),
  col = "green", type = "l"
)
lines(smooth.spline(dt, y, spar = 2),
  col = "blue", type = "l"
)

legend("topleft",
  legend = c(
    "spar = 0.35",
    "spar = 1",
    "spar = 2"
  ),
  col = c("red", "green", "blue"),
  lty = 1,
  cex = 0.55
)

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Citation

The E-Learning project SOGA-R was developed at the Department of Earth Sciences by Kai Hartmann, Joachim Krois and Annette Rudolph. You can reach us via mail by soga[at]zedat.fu-berlin.de.

You may use this project freely under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Please cite as follow: Hartmann, K., Krois, J., Rudolph, A. (2023): Statistics and Geodata Analysis using R (SOGA-R). Department of Earth Sciences, Freie Universitaet Berlin.