Simon Wood

Simon N Wood

Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY UK; +44 (0)1225 386603; s.wood _at_ bath.ac.uk

Apologies if I have not replied to you on an mgcv related query: I've got rather behind on mgcv email, especially on the interesting stuff that requires thought.

I work as a professor of statistics at the university of Bath. I have two main research interests.

Statistical modelling with smooth functions, in particular methods for generalized additive modelling and applications of generalized additive models (GAMs). I am especially interested in smoothness selection, and low rank smoothing, and have written an R package called mgcv which implements GAMs.
Using ecological dynamic models as statistical models to help understand ecological mechanisms. I have worked on delay differential equation estimation, in particular, and am currently interested in non-linear random effects methods and spatio-temporal dynamic models.

In 2006 I published a book called Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction with R , which explains the smooth modelling part of my work in some detail.

I am currently advising three PhD students:

Natalya Pya, works on monotonic and other shape preserving smoothing.
David Miller works on finite area smoothing.
Giampiero Marra works on inference and model selection with generalized additive models, and econometric applications.

Here is a selection of talks. It's not exhaustive, but hopefully gives some idea of what I work on.

Inaugural lecture with slides. [12/3/2009. A university of Bath podcast ]
GAM overview [invited talk at the excellent IWSM Barcelona, 2007]
Tensor product smoothing and GAMMs [Given in various forms, in various places].
Calanus in the North Atlantic - a large complex model estimation and testing problem. [St Andrews, RSS and elsewhere].
Some sort of overview [Basically a job talk].
GAM model selection [Given at IMPS meeting Tilburg '05].
GAMs for huge data sets [Interface '06, LA].
A short GAM course [UseR '06].

If the talks haven't put you off, here are some papers.

I am teaching 3 courses this year

Statistical Computing for statistics PhD students via APTS . The notes are available from this page
Second year linear modelling MA20035 Bath only.
A mathematical biology masters course: Statistics for biological dynamic modelling.

Here are a couple of examples of previous courses

mgcv - generalized additive (mixed) models and other generalized ridge regression for R.

Software

C.V. (not up to date).

Bath maps