# Tag Archives: gam()

I will give a short graduate course for PhD students, in Rennes, on Thurday mornings, in March (2nd, 9th, 23rd and 30th). The agenda will be

1. Nonlinear Regression Models and Smoothing Techniques

2. Bootstrapping and Regression

3. Penalized Regression Models and LASSO

4. Quantile Regression and Expectiles

There will be slides available by the end of February.

# Data Science for Actuaries, Regression Models with R

After an introduction to Advanced R, we will discuss for the last part of our crash course visualization and graphs (from the previous set of slides), and I just uploaded additional slides on regression models (including some pdf version)

# Actuariat de l’Assurance Non-Vie #7

Pour le septième chapitre du cours d’actuariat de l’assurance non-vie à l’ENSAE, on abordera la modélisation des coûts individuels, aussi bien dommage que responsabilité civile.. Les slides sont en ligne (la version pdf téléchargeable est comme souvent plus complète que celle sur slideshare)

# Choosing a Classifier

In order to illustrate the problem of chosing a classification model consider some simulated data,

> n = 500
> set.seed(1)
> X = rnorm(n)
> ma = 10-(X+1.5)^2*2
> mb = -10+(X-1.5)^2*2
> M = cbind(ma,mb)
> set.seed(1)
> Z = sample(1:2,size=n,replace=TRUE)
> Y = ma*(Z==1)+mb*(Z==2)+rnorm(n)*5
> df = data.frame(Z=as.factor(Z),X,Y)

A first strategy is to split the dataset in two parts, a training dataset, and a testing dataset.

> df1 = training = df[1:300,]
> df2 = testing  = df[301:500,]
• The Holdout Method: Training and Testing Datasets

The two datasets can be visualised below, with the training dataset on top, and the testing dataset below

> plot(df1$X,df1$Y,pch=19,col=c(rgb(1,0,0,.4),
+ rgb(0,0,1,.4))[df1\$Z])

# On Some Alternatives to Regression Models

When you start discussing with people in machine learning, you quickly hear something like “forget your econometric models, your GLMs, I can easily find a machine learning ‘model’ that can beat yours”. I am usually very sceptical, especially when I hear “easily” or “always“. I have no problem about the fact that I use old econometric models, but I had the feeling that things aren’t that easy. I can understand that we might have problems when we do have a lot of features (I am still working on that, I’ll get back to this point soon), but I have the feeling that I can still capture interactions, and non-linearities with standard econometric models as well as any machine learning algorithm.

Just to illustrate, consider the following ‘model

$\mathbb{E}[Y\vert\boldsymbol{X}=\boldsymbol{x}]=m(\boldsymbol{x})$

where $m(\cdot)$ is (just to illustrate)

> n <- 5000
> rtf <- function(x1, x2) { sin(x1+x2)/(x1+x2) }
> xgrid <- seq(1,6,length=31)
> ygrid <- seq(1,6,length=31)
> zgrid <- outer(xgrid,ygrid,rtf)
> persp(xgrid,ygrid,zgrid,theta=30, phi=30,
+ col="green", ticktype="detailed",shade=TRUE)

# Multiple (smoothed) regression and portfolio exposure

Wednesday, in class, we’ve seen how to visualize a multiple regression model (with two continuous explanatory variables). Here, the goal is to predict the average cost of an insurance claim, using some covariates, e.g. the age of the driver, and the age of the car (recall that losses here are liability losses). The prediction obtained from a (standard) generalized linear model, with a log-link

> reg1=glm(cout~ageconducteur+agevehicule,data=base,family=Gamma(link="log"))

The code to visualize the predicted average cost is the following: first, we have to compute predictions for specific values,

> pred=function(x,y){
+ predict(reg,newdata=data.frame(ageconducteur=x,
+ agevehicule=y),type="response")

Then, we use this function to compute values on a grid,

> X=seq(20,80,by=5)
> Y=0:20
> Z=outer(X,Y,p)
> image(X,Y,Z,col=rev(heat.colors(101)))
+ levels=c(1400,1800,2000,2200,2400,2600,2800,3000,3200,4000,5000))

If we use factors, and not continuous variates (cut versions of those two variates),

> reg2=glm(cout~cut(ageconducteur,breaks=c(0,22,35,55,80,100))*
+               cut(agevehicule,breaks=c(-1,1,3,5,10,100)),
+ data=base,family=Gamma(link="log"))

(note that we consider the Cartesian product, so values are computed for each product of factors, age of the driver and age of the car) we obtain

Obviously, we’re missing something here: the most expensive class with one model is the cheapeast for the other one! Of course, it might come from our classes (that were chosen a bit randomly), but it might be interesting to use nonlinear functions of the ages. So, let us use splines to smooth those two variables,

> reg3=glm(cout~bs(ageconducteur)+bs(agevehicule),data=base,
+ family=Gamma(link="log"))

With additive smoothed functions, we obtained a symmetric graph (due to the additive property)

while with a bivariate spline

> library(mgcv)
+ reg4=gam(cout~s(ageconducteur,agevehicule),data=base,
+ family=Gamma(link="log"))

(for some odd reasons, I could not use – easily – a bivariate spline in the Generalized Linear Model, but it did work considering a Generalized Additive Model – which is, by no means additive now). We can identify here some regions where the average cost can be extremely expensive… But, as mentioned wednesday, one should keep in mind that some parts of the square above are not reached. More precisely, the distribution of the portfolio, as a function of those two covariates is the following

Thus, the proportion of young drivers driving a brand new car, and the proportion of old drivers driving a very old car is rather small… If the goal is to find niches, one should look at the prediction more carefully, but if the goal is to make that everyone gets an insurance cover, maybe we should allow that some drivers are under-priced (especially when are rare in the portfolio). And one should keep in mind that average costs are extremely sensitive to large losses, as discussed previously http://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/3490 (and in class)

In the univariate case, I have migrated an old post, we I tried to reproduce (in R and in French) some standard graphs in the insurance industry: it is always interesting to visualize not only the prediction obtained from our models, but also the size of each class in the portfolio,

The post is online here http://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/1224

# Introduction aux modèles linéaires généralisés

J’ai un peu d’avance dans le cours. Je vais mettre en ligne les transparents pour la semaine prochaine (normalement), où nous aborderons la classe des modèles linéaires généralisés. Les transparents sont en ligne ici.

Je n’ai pas mis de section sur lesGeneralized Additive Models, on se contentera de la section sur le lissage évoquée à la fin des transparents sur la modélisation de la fréquence. Afin de légitimer les méthodes de lissage (sur l’âge de l’assuré en particulier), je renvoie vers un graphique produit il y a plusieurs années par un cabinet de conseil, qui notait que la forme de la fonction de lissage, liant l’âge à la fréquence est identique, dans tous les pays,

Mais je pense que je ferais un billet dédié au lissage, dans la problématique de la tarification en assurance IARD.