MortalitySmooth: An R Package for Smoothing Poisson Counts with P-Splines

Abstract

The MortalitySmooth package provides a framework for smoothing count data in both one- and two-dimensional settings. Although general in its purposes, the package is specifically tailored to demographers, actuaries, epidemiologists, and geneticists who may be interested in using a practical tool for smoothing mortality data over ages and/or years. The total number of deaths over a specified age- and year-interval is assumed to be Poisson-distributed, and P-splines and generalized linear array models are employed as a suitable regression methodology. Extra-Poisson variation can also be accommodated.