
477
27
Multilevel Factors and Smoothing
In our treatment of generalised linear models (GLMs) in Chapter 26, we have come across
two different types of rating factors:
a. Continuous variables such as the annual mileage or the driver’s age, which may or
may not be related monotonically to the modelled variable (e.g. the claim frequency)
b. Categorical variables (i.e. variables with a limited number of possible values) that
have in general no inherent order: examples are sex, occupation, car model and
geographical location
Categorical variables are straightforward to model when the number of levels is small,
such as is the case with sex. However ...