Kernel regression

${\displaystyle \operatorname {E} (Y\mid X=x)=\int yf(y\mid x)\,dy=\int y{\frac {f(x,y)}{f(x)}}\,dy}$

Using the kernel density estimation for the joint distribution f(x,y) and f(x) with a kernel K,

${\displaystyle {\hat {f}}(x,y)={\frac {1}{n}}\sum _{i=1}^{n}K_{h}(x-x_{i})K_{h}(y-y_{i}),}$

${\displaystyle {\hat {f}}(x)={\frac {1}{n}}\sum _{i=1}^{n}K_{h}(x-x_{i}),}$

we get

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}\operatorname {\hat {E}} (Y\mid X=x)&=\int {\frac {y\sum _{i=1}^{n}K_{h}(x-x_{i})K_{h}(y-y_{i})}{\sum _{j=1}^{n}K_{h}(x-x_{j})}}\,dy,\\[6pt]&={\frac {\sum _{i=1}^{n}K_{h}(x-x_{i})\int y\,K_{h}(y-y_{i})\,dy}{\sum _{j=1}^{n}K_{h}(x-x_{j})}},\\[6pt]&={\frac {\sum _{i=1}^{n}K_{h}(x-x_{i})y_{i}}{\sum _{j=1}^{n}K_{h}(x-x_{j})}},\end{aligned}}}$

which is the Nadaraya–Watson estimator.

The following commands of the R programming language use the npreg() function to deliver optimal smoothing and to create the figure given above. These commands can be entered at the command prompt via cut and paste.

install.packages("np")
library(np) # non parametric library
data(cps71)
attach(cps71)

m <- npreg(logwage~age)

plot(m, plot.errors.method="asymptotic",
     plot.errors.style="band",
     ylim=c(11, 15.2))

points(age, logwage, cex=.25)
detach(cps71)