I didn't see this method shown, so if someone else is looking to do this I found that ggplot documentation suggested a technique for using the gam
method that produced similar results to loess
when working with small data sets.
library(ggplot2)
x <- 1:10
y <- c(2,4,6,8,7,8,14,16,18,20)
df <- data.frame(x,y)
r <- ggplot(df, aes(x = x, y = y)) + geom_smooth(method = "gam", formula = y ~ s(x, bs = "cs"))+geom_point()
r
First with the loess method and auto formula Second with the gam method with suggested formula