Generalized Additive Model (GAM)

A generalized additive model, introduced by Trevor Hastie and Robert Tibshirani in 1986, extends the generalized linear model by replacing each linear term with a smooth, data-driven function of the predictor. This lets the model capture nonlinear relationships while preserving the additive, term-by-term interpretability of regression: each predictor contributes its own estimated curve, and the curves simply add up (on a link scale) to predict the response.